


ἄπειρον

by tigerlo



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: F/F, Greek Mythology AU, Sheer and utter ridiclousness, Vanity Fest, Vanity Fest 2018, hades au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-07-29 00:50:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16253249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlo/pseuds/tigerlo
Summary: “You’ll get used to the darkness after a while,” Charity offers casually, catching the way Vanessa squints when she looks around before raising her hand to inspect her nails. “You might even learn to hate the light after a time, like I do.”Vanessa begins her life as Persephone, wife to the God of the Underworld.(Written for Vanity Fest 2018 Theme: AU)





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, I'm not actually sure what this is, aside from maybe my favourite thing I've ever written, period. 
> 
> Thank you to the little bright stars who made me feel like this wasn't just mad, and was something worth finishing, or sharing. 
> 
> So yes, this is mad, but just give it a go, if you want. I think it's worth it.
> 
> (also, for you ancient greek dorks like me, the title in english is _aperion_ , which loosely translates to: 'that which is infinite, limitless, without boundary or end'. Which I think is extremely fitting for this iteration of Charity and Vanessa.

-

 

**Ἀρχή**

**Arche**

**(a beginning)**

 

-

 

_death blooms an end of death._

 

-

 

“It’s not so bad down here, you know,” Charity says with a sigh, drumming her fingers, with long nails painted blood red, over the armrests of the black throne that rises at her back.

 

_She’s gorgeous, this Hades_ , Vanessa thinks. They call her Charity too, but that’s her true name, after all.

 

Vanessa has heard whispers, of her terror, of her beauty, but they pale in comparison to the creature seated in front of her.

 

Charity’s gaze, hard but curious, follows Vanessa as she takes in her surroundings. Her hair is long and blonde, piled up on top of her head, exposing the creamy line of her throat. Her neckline is plunging, the dress full-length and long sleeved, blacker than the marble all around them.

 

The two massive Dobermans seated either side of Charity stand as Vanessa takes step after cautious step further into the throne room. She wonders why it was even built, this room, it’s not exactly like the Queen of the Underworld needs to hold court.

 

“You’ll get used to the darkness after a while,” Charity offers casually, catching the way Vanessa squints when she looks around before raising her hand to inspect her nails. “You might even learn to hate the light after a time, like I do.”

 

“It’s really just you here?” Vanessa asks, her head swinging wide as she takes in the enormous room, lined completely with black marble, shot through with white streaks. “No one else?”

 

“No one else,” Charity confirms, and her voice rings cold through the room, bouncing off of the gleaming stone. “You’re calm, love. Why? Don’t you hate me? For tricking you into coming here with me?”

 

“Is there any use in it?” Vanessa asks cynically, and Charity barks out a laugh in response. “Will it change anything, my anger?”

 

“No, Vanessa,” Charity replies, shaking her head, and she sounds almost amused. “I suppose not. Why didn’t you run, though? You’re not a fool, are you? I know you’ve been suspicious of your father’s plan for a while. You could have escaped. You could have been in a different place entirely when I came. You knew of my arrival, surely?”

 

“Maybe I didn’t want to?” Vanessa throws over her shoulder as she walks to run her palm down one of the walls. It’s warm under her touch, as she suspected. Not cold, like the tales she’s heard suggest. “Run, that is. Escape.”

 

“And why on earth, wouldn’t you want to run?” Charity asks, cocking her head. “You’d rather be trapped down here instead, with me?”

 

“Trapped?” Vanessa clarifies, raising an eyebrow when she spins to face Charity again. “Did any part of you taking me away look unwilling to you? Did I cry? Did I scream? Did I run?”

 

She’d barely blinked an eye, in fact, when her father and Charity had appeared alongside her in the field, where she’d been pathetically threading daisies together into a chain to pass the time until her father's plan came to fruition, finally. He’s never been as clever as he assumes himself to be, Vanessa thinks, scoffing internally. She’d known of his plan, this trade, her life for his own for months now, the only uncertainty being when Charity would come to claim her prize.

 

The truth of it is that Vanessa’s been bored for years, bored of rejecting the mediocre suitors fighting for her attention, bored with the triviality of life. She never thought she’d find something or someone that had caught her attention like Charity had when she’d been privy to one of the first hushed discussions between her and her father. She hadn’t meant to be in that part of the forest at all, it had only been chance that saw her there looking for a rare weed that didn’t grow near the family palace she called her home.

 

Charity had been impossible to miss, like a flame amongst the green, the forest curling and burning beneath the ground she stood on as she glared her father down, hands on her hips and a black crown resting on her head, her hair long around her shoulders.

 

Vanessa had caught the end of the conversation, crouched down amongst the thick moss, her fingers spread through the dirt of the forest floor, something about _bargain_ and _she’s all yours_ and _forever_ , and she’d been furious, felt more than betrayed, ready to storm over and tear her father to pieces, until she’d felt a twig snap beneath her hand.

 

Charity’s eye had cut through the distance between them at the sound, her eyes finding Vanessa’s, looking into her and not simply at her in a way that made Vanessa feel utterly naked in spite of her clothes. She hadn’t said anything, alerted Vanessa’s father to her presence, she’d simply winked at Vanessa so subtly her father hadn’t even noticed before clicking her fingers and disappearing abruptly in a thick cloud of acrid black smoke, and Frank had been left standing like a fool, alone.

 

The daisy chain she had managed to finish weaving rests atop her head now like a garland, but she can feel the life gone from the flowers, the once-green stems brown and brittle, because nothing living stays so here for long.

 

It had taken Charity two seasons before she had come for Vanessa, the world on the trembling edge of a third, when she and Frank had strolled into the meadow where Vanessa sat with her flowers. Charity had outpaced her father, reaching her first so that Vanessa barely saw the pathetic look on his face, or the self-protecting apology he had tried to stammer around Charity’s towering form.

 

She hadn’t looked so god-like from a distance, but she had up close.

 

There had been a glimmer under her skin that wasn’t human, a smoothness to her, a deep rumble that Vanessa could feel in her blood when she exhaled, like it disturbed the very life around her. It was intoxicating though, the danger in it, the seduction, and Vanessa hadn’t faltered for a second before she had reached her hand out to Charity’s, just as the rain had begun.

 

It had started to wet her hair before she’d thrown her father one last furious glance, as Charity had laughed high and cold, and they’d disappeared together in another cloud of smoke.

 

Vanessa had opened her eyes and found herself standing on the prow of a boat, on a river of stony grey water with flecks of silver that ran through it. Charity had been resolute like a statue by her side, holding her hands clasped in front of her, a wicked smile on her face before gesturing silently to the cavernous tunnel all around them, and a dock in the far distance ahead.

 

There hadn’t been anyone waiting for them save Charity’s hounds, sitting with their ears pricked and their teeth bared, although Vanessa thought she had seen a flash of the ferryman behind her when Charity had offered Vanessa her hand to unboard the vessel.

 

“Mummy’s home,” Charity had said to the dogs, and they had softened immediately, taking a step towards Vanessa, forcing her in turn to take a step closer to Charity, who had laughed. “They won’t hurt you, love. They don’t hurt anyone unless I tell them to.”

 

She had lead Vanessa from the pristine dock with water calm under a deep red dusk, not another soul in sight, along a smooth marble path that led to a structure carved into the side of a mountain.

 

“Is this….” Vanessa had begun before Charity had dropped her hand to the small of Vanessa’s back, the touch hot against her skin through the thin fabric of her dress.

 

“Welcome home, Vanessa,” Charity had replied simply, gesturing for Vanessa to walk ahead of her, as the great black doors swung open at their arrival.

 

It had seemed like a dream, Charity leading her through the halls into the main throne room. She still feels that way now, almost like she’s hovering in the place between sleep and consciousness, even with the solidity of the warm stone beneath her palm.

 

“It suits you,” Charity says, coming to stand at Vanessa’s back as she inspects one of the carvings etched into a column, an unnatural warmth radiating off her body. She’s close. Very, very close. “The ring, I mean.”

 

Her arm slides around Vanessa’s waist, scooping Vanessa’s hand up, holding it high so the light of the fire catches it, the deep red stone glowing against the skin of Vanessa’s finger. She had felt her hand grow heavier at her side the second they’d set foot on the land here at the docks, the ring appearing out of thin air.

 

The band is perfectly sized, wound around her finger, the same tone of the river they had sailed in on, the jewel the same precise tone of Charity’s nails.

 

“So does yours,” Vanessa replies smoothly, turning her hand, exposing the ring on Charity’s, the stone in hers as black as the fabric draped across her skin. She’s struck by how strangely calm she feels down here, even with Charity so near. Oddly at home. “They make a good pair.”

 

“I’m pleased you think so,” Charity says, and Vanessa can hear a slightly vain note of pride in her voice, that she finds she likes the sound of.

 

“Is that it then?” Vanessa asks a little bluntly, and Charity laughs, resting her chin on Vanessa’s shoulder as she drags a fingernail along Vanessa’s palm. She’s intimately aware how close they’re standing, but she doesn’t want to move an inch. “Are we married?”

 

“What?” Charity replies cynically, and Vanessa has to suppress the urge to turn around and glare at her, Queen of the Underworld or not. “Do you want a ceremony, love?” Charity continues. “A soft sentimental spectacle like the weak children above ground use to feed each other false promises they know they’ll never keep?”

 

“I keep my word,” Vanessa says fiercely. She feels Charity cackle again at her back, and wonders absently whether anyone has ever shown her as much contempt before, in place of fear.

 

“I don’t doubt that, babe,” Charity purrs into Vanessa’s ear, her voice thick and syrupy, the rumble of it raising goosebumps on Vanessa’s forearms, and she knows that Charity notices them too.

 

She contemplates taking a step away, putting some distance between the two of them, because she’s not far away from turning in Charity’s arms and doing something she knows she shouldn’t. The truth of it is though that she’s been completely unable to remove Charity from her thoughts since she first saw her in the clearing with her father, and she’s not sure if the way Charity has lingered in her mind is her own doing, or Charity’s design; part of her magic or not.

 

Judging by the way her body is acting of its free will now though, tells her that it’s unlikely to have been anything but her own subconscious. She thinks that Charity is the kind of being more wholly satisfied by bringing a conquest to her bed without coercion, that she wouldn’t be interested in anything more than her own physicality being the thing to draw people there.

 

“You didn’t run,” Charity says slowly, and Vanessa can feel her breath warm at her ear as Charity moves closer still, sliding her arm around Vanessa’s waist, pulling her back against the heat of her body. It’s familiar, it’s _far_ too familiar, and yet Vanessa can’t find it in herself to push Charity away. “Does that mean there was something you wanted down here?”

 

“I’m not sure,” Vanessa replies, and she knows it’s dangerous to play coy with the Queen of the Dead, but she can’t help it.

 

Charity doesn’t seem to mind though, Vanessa thinks she might even lean into the challenge, catching a broad smile on Charity’s face when her hands move to Vanessa’s hips and turn her around firmly, before she pushes Vanessa against the wall behind her.

 

“Not sure, hmmm?” Charity husks. There’s an immense power in every inch of her, Vanessa can feel it when Charity places one of her thighs between her own as she steps closer, can almost see it trembling beneath the skin, just itching to be released. “Perhaps there’s something I can do to help make up that indecisive mind of yours.”

 

Charity’s hands curl around her hip bones, pulling Vanessa harder against her body, and Vanessa expects them to be inhibited by the fabric of their dresses but Charity moves like water against her, so that Vanessa can feel the heightened warmth of her skin, hotter than the marble at her back as easily as if there weren’t a scrap of fabric between them at all.

 

She knows she shouldn’t be surprised, this is Charity’s domain after all. There will be magic in every inch of this place to aid Charity in her every wish and desire, seduction included, it would seem.

 

“Are you ever going to touch me, Vanessa?” Charity asks, her eyes flicking down to where Vanessa’s hands are hovering over her sides.

 

Vanessa’s not sure why she hasn’t yet, but she thinks it has a little to do with what she suspects she’ll feel when she does. Charity looks at her with a curious grin, tightening the grip on her hips before leaning in close. “Or am I going to have to touch myself?”

 

It hits her like an arrow to the stomach then, the truth of what her arrival here means: Charity is her wife, her _wife_ , and this union has been made, consummated or not. This body in front of her is as much hers as she is Charity’s, or will be, when they give each other everything. Charity is hers to claim.

 

“See,” Charity breathes heavily when Vanessa’s hands finally move to her sides, sliding around her waist, splaying out across Charity’s lower back. It’s possessive, the gesture, and the hum that leaves Charity’s lips tells Vanessa that she’s pleased with the fact that it is. “Not so bad now, is it?”

 

“No,” Vanessa replies, and her mind is overrun with the sensation of Charity beneath her hands.

 

She’s hot, like a furnace, hotter than a human should be, and Vanessa almost feels as though her hands should burn against her skin, but they don’t. She can sense the strength in the muscles at her fingertips, in the way that they twitch and tense when her hands move. “It’s not so bad at all.”

 

“I can show you a few other things, that aren’t so bad. And some that very much are, if you’d like,” Charity drawls.

 

She leans in and almost touches her lips to Vanessa’s but holds back the smallest fraction so they don’t, and Vanessa feels Charity’s voice settle between her thighs, can feel Charity’s skin flare hotter beneath her hands.

 

Vanessa’s uncertain about a thousand things, not the least of which is how much she can trust Charity, and knows she should be uncertain about a thousand more, but she can’t find it in herself to listen to any of the warning voices in her head, because the only thing she can think of, the only thing that she wants, is standing in front of her.

 

Desire isn’t a foreign concept to Vanessa, she’s no innocent, she has _felt_ before, but not like this. Never like this. Charity draws in a breath that stretches the muscles between her ribs, pushing her against Vanessa, and she wonders if Charity can taste it, how much Vanessa wants her. She wonders if she can hear Vanessa’s heart beating quicker and quicker and quicker.

 

“Why would a beautiful thing like you not fall into the arms of someone up there, hmm?” Charity asks, and Vanessa can hear the genuine curiosity in her voice as she takes one of her hands from Vanessa’s hips, raising it to push a strand of Vanessa’s hair behind her ear. “Why wasn’t that enough?”

 

“I don’t know,” Vanessa answers easily, because she doesn’t. She doesn’t know why it wasn’t enough, all she knows is that this - Charity - this is.

 

Charity’s touch lingers on her jaw, as if examining the softness of the skin so different to her own, and Vanessa longs to test what Charity’s feels like in turn without a layer of fabric between them. She had been expecting the hold at her waist to falter as Charity redirects her attention, but it doesn’t, not a fraction, her strength doesn’t waver, even with a hand otherwise occupied. Charity’s thigh even pushes firmer between Vanessa’s in a way that Vanessa is finding increasingly difficult not to utilise the friction of.

 

“You won’t age here,” Charity explains, her voice a little distant as she traces the line of Vanessa’s cheekbone with her thumb. “You won’t feel the sun on your face for moons at a time, but you’ll never grow a day older than you are now, even when you’re above the ground.”

 

That had been part of the deal, to stop Vanessa wilting, she could visit her world for a few months at a time, but she had to come back here, back to Charity. She wonders how long it will be until the journey above ground becomes pained, how long it will be before she craves the dark and the queen that lives here amongst it.

 

“I won’t die?” Vanessa asks, and she’s not sure whether she should feel upset or not. Part of her had assumed as much would be true once Charity saw the deal through, but it’s a strange thing to ponder in reality, the loss of death. The eternal absence of it.

 

“No,” Charity replies, her hand moving to follow the line of Vanessa’s neck now, down to her collarbone and across to her shoulder, and Vanessa can’t tell if her voice is cold, or glad. “You’re tied to me now, through this union. My immortality becomes yours, too.”

 

She meets Vanessa’s eyes as Vanessa draws a shaky breath in, and Charity’s gaze changes when she does so, half-softening with a lingering hint of curiosity.

 

“Does that upset you?” Charity asks her, her thumb tracing the shell of Vanessa's ear. “Surely you must have assumed as much if you knew what was going to happen. Why would I subject my consort to the horrid weakness of age?”

 

“But I can’t be killed either?” Vanessa questions and she feels like a fool, like a child asking so many things, but Charity doesn’t seem to mind answering her.

 

“No, you’ll bleed to a point, but nothing will truly harm you. Someone could try cutting off your hand, but the blade would fail before they could,” Charity explains, and then something quick and hot flashes behind her eyes. “Or I’d kill them first.”

 

“You’d kill for me?” Vanessa asks curiously, and she’s surprised, although she doesn’t quite understand why. She knows who Charity is, after all. What she does.

 

“In a heartbeat,” Charity answers her, and there’s more softness in her voice than before, more than Vanessa has ever heard from her, enough to wonder whether Charity could be capable of something more than desire, or lust, or jealousy, or greed.

 

Charity’s thumb finds the corner of Vanessa’s mouth, brushing so lightly against the edge of her lips that Vanessa isn’t certain if she felt it at all. She wants to speak thanks or something, anything, but she doesn’t trust the stability of her voice to do so.

 

“This won’t be the prison sentence you might think it will be,” Charity offers, and Vanessa wants to shake her head and say that _no, she never expected it to be,_ but Charity isn’t finished, so she bites her tongue. “You won’t feel the warmth of the sun here, but I promise you’ll never be cold.”

 

She wonders how long Charity has been here alone. She wonders whether she tires of the silence or revels in it. She wonders if she’s ever ached to say those words to someone, to have a companion. To have a wife.

 

Vanessa doesn’t think this softness is a ploy or a trick, and that can only mean that yes, she has.

 

“I never thought for a second that I would be,” Vanessa replies boldly, and Charity’s eyes light at the sound of her words: she’s excited by them, surprised even, so Vanessa doesn’t stop. “We’re in hell, aren’t we? Bound to be a flame about, or two.”

 

Charity laughs at Vanessa’s cheek, the sound of it loud and booming in the throne room. It should be intimidating, but it only makes Vanessa’s smile widen. It only makes her heart gallop quicker.

 

“Would you prefer that?” Charity asks with a smirk, both of her hands moving back to Vanessa’s waist, tugging her close so their hips bump together. “A fire? And not me?”

 

“No,” Vanessa replies smoothly, shaking her head, and Charity’s grip tightens as she speaks, as her hands slide down Charity’s back, stopping just before the rise and curve of her backside. “I don’t want the fire, Charity.”

 

“What do you want, then, Vanes- _sa_?” Charity asks, and she drawls the last syllable of her name out in a way that makes Vanessa’s core throb.

 

“I want….” Vanessa says slowly, as her hand slides lower, as she leans up on her tiptoes, brushing her lips against Charity’s, shuddering when she feels a sound like a growl emit from deep in Charity’s chest.  

 

Charity turns her head, sliding her lips against Vanessa’s in return, and just as she feels Charity’s tongue brush her lower lip, _just_ as she sighs in relief, the warmth against her is gone, and Charity is pulling away with a snarl.

 

“What is it?” Vanessa asks, immediately alert, her hands moving, wrapping around Charity’s upper arms as she looks around the room.

 

There’s nothing there though, no signal that anything is wrong or out of place besides the dogs whining, pacing impatiently by the door they came in through. Whatever it is, the call, the warning, it’s behind Vanessa's human comprehension.

 

She wonders distantly if _human_ is something she can still call herself.

 

“Duty calls, love,” Charity says, clearly angry, grinding her teeth together, and she turns her head towards the dogs but her hands don’t move from Vanessa’s waist, nor her thigh between Vanessa’s legs. “I have to go.”

 

“Go where?” Vanessa asks, perplexed, her hold on Charity tightening automatically, reluctant to let her go.

 

“It’s a long story, Vanessa,” Charity replies with a sigh, and Vanessa can almost feel her priorities shift - albeit with an effort - to whatever it is she needs to attend to now. “Too long for now. We’ll have time for everything else, later.”

 

“Later?” Vanessa asks, frowning, and she’s trying to retain a touch of nonchalance as her hands rub soothingly at Charity’s lower back, but she knows she’s failing miserably. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

 

Charity fixes her with a glare that speaks a warning to Vanessa, not aggressively but a reminder perhaps, that Charity won’t be questioned beyond a point. Not at this stage, anyway.

 

“Not terribly long, I hope,” Charity answers with an explanation that Vanessa hadn’t been expecting. “It’s only a minor….complication, but I need to see to it regardless. Feel free to look around in my absence, there’s a separate bedchamber made up for you, one of the hounds will lead you there when you’re ready. She’ll stay by your side when I’m not here, so don’t panic when she follows you about.”

 

“You don’t trust me?” Vanessa asks curiously, and it’s ridiculous because Charity has no reason at all to trust her, would be a fool to so early on, but the insinuation stings nonetheless.

 

“I don’t know,” Charity replies in an echo of Vanessa’s words earlier, slightly amused, watching Vanessa’s reaction carefully. “Not yet. But their attention isn’t to watch you. I had thought you might like the companionship. It can be rather quiet down here otherwise.”

 

“You’d have one stay by my side, for me?” Vanessa asks, flummoxed in all honesty, not having expected nearly as thoughtful a gesture as that so early on.

 

“Of course I would,” Charity returns, smiling down at Vanessa's reaction, obviously pleased with herself for thinking of the idea. “I told you, Vanessa. I don’t want to make this place miserable for you. I want it to be home. As much as it can be, anyway.”

 

“Thank you,” Vanessa says as a rush of blood finds her cheeks, and she ducks her head in an attempt to hide it.

 

It’s ridiculous, she thinks scolding herself, she’s not a maiden, but something about Charity’s power makes her innocence feel so obvious.

 

“You don’t need to want for anything,” Charity tells her, sliding her forefinger under Vanessa’s chin, lifting her head up to align their gaze. “There aren’t rules here. Or limits. Move about this place as you desire. And if you want something, ask.”

 

There’s a double entendre hidden in Charity’s words, barely obscured in the obvious look of want she gives freely to Vanessa, in the smirk that brightens her skin, and for a moment Vanessa thinks she can see bare limbs intertwined, twisting, turning, _pushing_ reflected in Charity’s eyes.

 

“Ask anything?” Vanessa questions a little coyly, curious to test the offer, and she feels a rush of warmth against her like a pulse through Charity’s body, a flare of heat when she does so.

 

“Anything, love,” Charity replies, her thumb fitting under Vanessa’s jaw, lifting her head up. “Might not give you the answer you want every time, but…”

 

She shrugs carelessly and Vanessa understands what’s going unsaid there, Vanessa can always ask but this will remain Charity’s domain, and Charity will always hold the right to dismiss whatever she wants. She doesn’t think there will be a refusal to the question she wants to ask, but it doesn’t make her feel any less nervous.

 

“You said separate bedchambers,” Vanessa says slowly, curious as to whether she’ll need to fully articulate herself or whether Charity will get there without it. “Do I have to-“

 

“Sleep in your own?” Charity asks with a smile in her voice, and the space that she had put between the two of them is eliminated completely when Charity pushes her up against the warm stone again. “Not if you don’t want to. You’re welcome to sleep in mine if that’s what you‘d prefer, love.”

 

“What do you want?” Vanessa asks, ignoring the nervous thump of her heart, and Charity throws her head back and laughs before she turns to Vanessa with a look that positively drips with seduction.

 

“Isn’t that obvious?” Charity drawls, her voice lingering on the last syllable before she leans in, her breath warm on Vanessa's lips.  

 

She’s certain that Charity is going to close that gap, to kiss her and forget whatever it is drawing her elsewhere, but she doesn’t. She brushes her lips across Vanessa’s instead, driving her almost to distraction in the process, forcing Vanessa’s back off the wall in search of contact, tracing the line of her jaw with them before she reaches Vanessa’s ear.

 

“Rest, Vanessa,” Charity breathes, as if Vanessa will be able to do such a thing so worked up, her teeth scraping the flesh of Vanessa’s earlobe, and Vanessa can feel her smiling, fully aware of exactly what she’s doing. “You still tire, after all. Rest, and we’ll talk later. When I return.”

 

“Where are you-“ Vanessa asks, but Charity is already gone before she can finish her sentence.

 

The smoke might already be dissipating around her, fading into a black mist as one of the dogs pads towards her, non-threatening in her posture, but the places Charity’s hands were a moment ago still burn.

 

-

 

Charity hadn’t been lying when she said Vanessa would have freedom within this place. She doesn’t meet a single locked door as she looks around, walking from room to room, trying to take in the scale of it.

 

The cavernous structure that Charity calls home dwarves anything else she’s ever seen before, and it’s obviously empty, but there’s a lingering warmth still that Vanessa hadn’t been expecting. It’s slightly less than before, less than when Charity was here next to her, not something she would wish to feel all the time, but she thinks she will be comfortable here in Charity’s absence at least.

 

The Doberman leads her through a dining hall, tables lined with every type of food imaginable, the scent coming from it making Vanessa's mouth water, and as tempting as it is to stop and taste some, she’s more interested in completing her initial exploration of the palace.

 

Vanessa and her companion finally meet a grand staircase after roaming the halls for what feels like hours, at the top of which Vanessa assumes she’ll find the bedchambers. There are only two doors opposite one another once she reaches the landing, despite the length and size of the hallway, and the dog directs her to one first that Vanessa assumes will be the room intended for her.

 

The room is enormous, not that she’s overly surprised given the size of everything else here. The walls and floor are all the same smooth marble of the throne room only a slightly lighter shade, flecks of broad silver shot through the black stone, interrupted only by a couple of large fur rugs, and a roaring fire at one end of the room across from a massive bed lined with furs.

 

It’s warm but not unpleasantly so, Vanessa thinks as she makes her way over to an armoire that looks to be full of belongings. She feels an initial spike of something immensely uncomfortable, a worry that perhaps this wasn’t a room for her after all, but someone else entirely, before she starts looking through the clothes.

 

There are a number of garments hanging in the wardrobe, from formal gowns like the one Charity had been wearing before she’d disappeared, right the way through to the far more informal dress Vanessa is wearing from her earlier excursion in the woods. There are a collection of small things too, nightgowns and sleepwear that range from the informal to the formal as well.

 

It’s only once she gets to the end of the selection in front of her that she realises all of these things are meant for her.

 

They’re all in her size, she notices with a slight note of amazement, and they’re all to her taste. Even the formal gowns, not that she wears them often, are precisely what she would choose to have made for herself, given the opportunity.

 

Vanessa doesn’t bother to be perplexed for long though, she disappeared from a forest in a puff of smoke to be brought to the Underworld as it’s Queen’s new bride, after all, a wardrobe of new clothes exactly to her liking is hardly something to bat an eyelid at.

 

She runs her hand along the fine fabric of each garment, smiling as she moves past fine silk and soft cotton. There are a number of things that will perfectly compliment the gown Charity had on earlier, and she can’t be certain of course, she’s only seen Charity a handful of times before and she has an idea she would have dressed to impress for those occasions, but something tells her the deep black hadn’t quite been a special occasion dress. Charity does seem the type prone to dramatics, it makes sense that her wardrobe would always reflect that too, regardless of who she had an agenda to threaten during the day.

 

Vanessa's hands close around a deep blue gown with long sleeves and modestly high front but a plunging back. She’ll wear that tomorrow, she thinks with a little thrill, just to see the look on Charity’s face. She sets it apart from the other dresses to more easily discern it from the mass of fabric later, before looking back to the collection of night things. She’ll wear that tomorrow but she has no intention of going to sleep in the dress she’s wearing currently.

 

Just as she has no intention of sleeping in this room, alone.

 

She looks around, suddenly wishing for a bowl of warm water to clean and freshen up with, and her eyes fall on a basin before she’s done turning, over by the fire, that she could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. She takes one of the nightgowns from the wardrobe, changing her mind from a red to a black at the last minute, before walking over to the basin.

 

Vanessa knows how dangerous a thing it is that she’s even considering, sharing the bed of the Queen of the Underworld before she barely knows anything about the woman she can now call her wife, but she doesn’t care. She knew what she was accepting the moment she decided not to flee when she learned of her father’s plan.

 

This, tonight, and the anticipation of it, has kept a current running across Vanessa’s skin since the second she saw Charity disappear from the field the first time. She knew what this position was likely to entail, being so close to Charity, and she won’t lie and say the thought of it has left her for longer than a moment. She wanted Charity from that day in the clearing. She wants her now, even with the danger that hangs around her like an intoxicatingly sweet and palpable scent.

 

The hound lowers itself to its haunches as Vanessa strips and washes, waiting patiently as she prepares herself for bed. She doesn’t have a clue whether Charity will even be back before the morning to join her, but that doesn’t matter, what does is that she makes her intentions perfectly clear. The thousand complications of what she wants are a problem for the morning, or for when she goes above ground again, not for now.

 

The silk slip fits perfectly, sliding over her body like it was made for her, and Vanessa supposes with a smile that it was. She catches a glance of herself in one of the long mirrors in the room, twisting her hair over her shoulder in one long ringlet before walking back to the wardrobe. She reaches for a silk robe to partially cover herself as she walks between the two rooms, why she’s not certain, it’s not like she’s going to meet anyone else.

 

She pads across the floor of the room laid out for her barefoot, the marble pleasantly warm and smooth beneath the soles of her feet. She’s surprised by how at ease she feels here, not particularly on edge or worried despite where she is, even though she knows full well that she should be. She is weary though, Charity was right about that, and slightly anxious for her return, too.

 

The dog waits for Vanessa at the door before leading her across the way, and she jumps when the door to her room shuts quietly by itself behind her.

 

Maybe not as at ease as she thought, Vanessa thinks, placing a hand over heart as the door to Charity’s room swings open.

 

The space isn’t dissimilar to her own, a little bigger perhaps but not by much, and lowly lit with a few torches around the edge of the room as Vanessa’s was. The bed is a little grander, and the wardrobe is about seven times the size of Vanessa’s, but there’s a roaring fire in here too, and the familiarity of that, the one constant between this world and her own soothes Vanessa’s racing heart a little.

 

She takes her time walking around the room, surprised to find that there aren’t many personal effects on display aside from a few pieces of jewellery scattered over a table, and Vanessa wonders absently as her fingers trace the lines of precious stones set into a heavy necklace, whether they’re hidden away, or whether Charity has any at all.

 

There’s a small table near the fire with a fresh vase of wine and a small offering of cheese and fruit set out on it, and amongst them, Vanessa spots something dark red that she recognises instantly.

 

Pomegranate.

 

She feels a cold hand at the back of her neck and she whips her head around, half expecting to see Charity but she’s not there. No one is. She’s still as alone as she was a moment ago.

 

Vanessa knows exactly what the fruit represents, everyone in her world does. It’s Charity’s favourite fruit, and an anchor to the Underworld. If anyone human consumes it down here, they’re fated to a life below the surface, and Vanessa had been expecting it to be the final part of her initiation to this new life.

 

She knows the placement of this isn’t a trick though, because there wasn’t any fruit in her own room, only here, in a room that Charity won’t have had complete assurance that Vanessa would even come to. This was meant for Charity upon her return, not to trick Vanessa into anything she doesn’t understand the consequences of.

 

Only she does understand the consequences of eating the fruit. She understands exactly what it means.

 

She walks over to the platter, picking up the fruit delicately between her fingers as though it were poisoned. Vanessa supposes in a funny way, it is. It looks delicious though, there’s no arguing that at all. She holds it up, and it seems strange that her future, that the rest of her life, mortal and immortal, hinges on the seeds of this one small piece of fruit.

 

In a way she’s glad to do this without Charity watching, to make the decision in her own right, and in her own time. She’s glad to give Charity the assurance that this decision was made willingly too, without any air of coercion that might come from Charity being present when she does finally taste it.

 

It’s a simple thing to do in the end, even with the weight of the consequence of the decision looming massive over her, as simple as breathing, in fact. She lifts the fruit to her lips, not hesitating for a moment before she bites into the flesh of it, savouring the rush of juice over her tongue.

 

She’s not sure what she was expecting when she does so, maybe for Charity to rematerialise next to her, for lightning to shake the palace she stands in, but there aren’t any dramatics, not like that anyway.

 

Vanessa feels the physical change almost instantly though. She feels the warmth fill her belly as the fruit slides down her throat, she feels her veins flare hot beneath the skin in her wrists and at her neck, and she watches as the stone on her finger glows as if lit from the inside, the heat seeming to retreat and reside within as it settles through the rest of her body. She shivers, not from any source of cold but from power, from the dull ache of it that she feels within herself now, the echo of Charity’s magic, she supposes.

 

The desire to feel Charity beneath her hands throbs around her heart messily, overwhelming her for a moment, and she wonders whether Charity would hear her if she called for her. She wonders if this new change will open some deeper channel of communication or connection between the two of them.

 

The last thing she wants to do is bother Charity though. If the matter was urgent enough to draw her away from Vanessa on a night like this, it’s likely not something she should try and pull her back from before she finishes whatever it is that requires finishing.

 

Vanessa knows she’ll be back, and she knows this is likely the first place she’ll come to when she does, so she turns back towards the bed. What better place to wait than that.

 

She’s struck with the sudden thought that she doesn’t even know if Charity sleeps, or whether the bed is simply for spectacle or something less innocent. She suspects it does serve a practical use of some kind when she steps towards it, running her hand along the softness of the sheets, and the scent that is indescribably Charity finds her as she does so.

 

She feels a little ridiculous but she looks towards the hound for some sort of affirmation before pulling the sheet and furs back, almost laughing when the dog bows her head and walks back towards the door, curling up where Vanessa assumes she will await her master’s return.

 

That’s as good a confirmation as she’s likely to get, Vanessa thinks, so she slides beneath the sheets before she can talk herself out of it. She finds herself feeling a little nervous as she does, can suddenly feel the distance between her home and this place yawn dangerously in front of her.

 

It’s a very long way to have come, she muses as she tastes the juice of the pomegranate on her tongue, and it’s a very long road she knows she’ll never be able to walk back the same way again.

 

She rests herself against the headboard of the grand bed, propped up so she can wait for Charity to return without drifting off, but there’s something deeply soothing about the smell of Charity all around her that calls her, _beckons_ her to sleep.

 

Without consciously doing so, Vanessa finds herself sliding down into the welcoming softness of the pile of furs, and gives over to the weight that drags her limbs down into a dark softness.

 

-

 

Vanessa wakes sometime later, minutes or hours she isn’t certain, all she knows is that she’s never felt so rested in her entire life.

 

The light in the room is slightly lower than before, as though the flame in the torches had adjusted accordingly during her sleep, and there’s something else that isn’t the same as when she fell asleep, either. The figure standing in front of the mirror across the room.

 

Charity is home.

 

She’s leaning against the dresser when Vanessa opens her eyes, watching Vanessa almost curiously, a red cloth in her hands, and her smile widens when Vanessa raises herself onto her elbow before sitting up, resting her back against the headboard.

 

“Get lost on the way to your own room, did you love?” Charity asks, her smile growing slightly wicked as her eyes shift, following the line of bare skin now exposed across Vanessa’s shoulders.

 

“No, I found my own room just fine,” Vanessa answers, and her voice is so rough from sleep that she can’t help but wonder how long she’s been unconscious for.

 

“Just liked this one better?” Charity teases, and Vanessa rolls her eyes, wondering whether this stubbornness is here to stay, or whether it’s just a test.

 

“This one comes with you, doesn’t it?” Vanessa replies, her voice beginning to even out when she pushes the hair back from her face. “This is the only one that I want.”

 

“You’re awfully bold, you know, Vanessa, for someone in such a foreign place,” Charity says evenly, narrowing her eyes, and Vanessa's expecting her to move across the room towards her then, but she doesn’t. She stays put against the dresser instead, her hands twisting around the cloth she’s still holding. “I like it.”

 

It takes her sleep-addled brain a moment to realise why Charity is keeping her distance, a moment for her to realise that Charity’s appearance is slightly more askew than it was when she left Vanessa earlier. Her hair is down around her shoulders now, the sleeves of her dress are pushed up high past her elbows, and when Charity moves her hands, Vanessa realises that there are patches of something deeply red up Charity’s forearms and over the backs of her hands that she hadn’t noticed before.

 

Vanessa throws the furs back off herself, unconcerned with her state of near undress and the way she sways when she stands, making her way directly over to Charity, who is watching her with an increased state of curiosity.

 

“You’re hurt,” Vanessa says, pulling the cloth out of her hands. It’s red, as she suspected, but not by design. With blood.

 

Now that she’s closer she can see tears through the fabric of Charity’s dress, across her stomach and forearms and over her heart too, some small, arrow sized, and some larger, more jagged like a sword strike. There isn’t an injury on her though, there are a few red lines across some parts of her skin, deeper blows Vanessa suspects, but nothing else.

 

“Is this your blood?” Vanessa asks, holding up the cloth, and Charity shrugs casually, her eyes keen, watching to see how Vanessa reacts.

 

“Some of it is, some of it’s not,” Charity replies flippantly, pliant in Vanessa’s hands as she runs a touch over Charity’s upper body, matching up the cuts in her clothing with the healed marks on her skin.

 

“I thought you were immortal?” Vanessa asks, and she’s confused because everything she knew of the Gods was that they were different to humans. Infallible. This seems wrong.

 

“Oh, I am,” Charity responds easily, tilting her head to the side as Vanessa’s hands run down her forearms, stopping at her wrists. “Nothing can kill me, similar to what I explained earlier. I can’t be dismembered or beheaded, but our father thought it amusing to allow us to bleed still. Pointless business, it is. And messy too.”

 

“What happened?” Vanessa questions, meeting Charity’s eye. She’s not expecting an answer in all honesty, but she can’t stop herself from asking it anyway.

 

“I make deals with people from time to time,” Charity explains, allowing Vanessa to take the cloth from her hands and set it on the table behind her. “Sometimes people keep their deals. The smart ones. Or the ones too afraid to cross me. And sometimes people, stupid people, foolish people, don’t.”

 

“And this was?” Vanessa asks softly, her breath caught in her throat, as if making any sound that isn’t strictly necessary might make Charity withdraw.

 

“Someone foolish,” Charity answers simply, her gaze sharp when Vanessa threads her fingers through the space between Charity’s despite the lingering tint of red on them. “Someone very foolish who made matters worse by fighting me.”

 

“They’re-“ Vanessa starts, but she doesn’t finish, because she knows exactly what happens to the people who cross Charity.

 

“They’re dead, Vanessa,” Charity says without emotion, taking her hands back from Vanessa’s, straightening her spine, and Vanessa understands this to be another test, too.

 

“Good,” Vanessa replies, and she’s not sure they deserved it, but she knows that they knew the rules. They knew what happens to the people who cross Charity, who cross Hades, when they made their decision to.

 

“Full of surprises, aren’t you?” Charity drawls, a smile turning her eyes a different shade as she watches Vanessa rinse the cloth in the bowl of warm water beside them.

 

“You have no idea,” Vanessa laughs a little dryly as she starts gently wiping the remaining dried blood off Charity’s hands and forearms.

 

“I have one or two, ideas that is,” Charity says following Vanessa’s gentle movements. “You don’t need to do that, you know? I’m more than capable of cleaning up myself. My mess, after all.”

 

“I know,” Vanessa replies easily, pausing to look Charity in the eye. “I want to. Unless you’d rather-“

 

“No, by all means,” Charity says with a smirk, gesturing down with a nod of her head. “Rather nice, this, being waited on.”

 

“Have you ever…” Vanessa begins but she’s not entirely certain how to continue, she only knows that she wants to, because she’s curious as to whether there has ever been anyone in her place, in _this_ place. “Have you ever taken a-“

 

“A wife before?” Charity finishes for her, and Vanessa can hear how amused she is.

 

“Yes,” Vanessa replies flatly, scowling at Charity and not taking as much care not to splash her with the water in the bowl beside them when she soaks the cloth again. “And I’m glad my being uncomfortable is so amusing to you.”

 

“It’s endearing, love,” Charity says with a laugh. “And a little amusing too.”

 

“Hush,” Vanessa replies but she’s smiling when she returns to her self-appointed task, and she can feel Charity doing the same above her.

 

“Bossy,” Charity throws back and Vanessa feels herself blush under the thick tone of Charity’s voice.

 

“You have no idea,” Vanessa says again and this time Charity’s laugh is louder.

 

She feels some of the tension in Charity’s body ease a little then, and she takes a small step closer, her blush growing when Charity shifts her legs slightly to accommodate her standing between them.

 

“No, I haven’t ever taken a wife,” Charity answers after a long pause, and Vanessa doesn’t stop her measured attention on Charity’s now-clean hands this time, hoping her continued action will lead Charity to keep talking too.

 

“A lover?” Vanessa asks carefully. She knows that she has no real reason to be, not when she hasn’t known Charity more than a flash in time, but she can’t stop the twinge of jealousy that follows her question.

 

“A few, in your world, but I’ve never brought anyone back here, Vanessa,” Charity answers easily, and Vanessa feels her stomach relax at the reply, at the assurance in Charity’s voice.

 

“Why me?” Vanessa asks, more than a little curious. “Why am I the first? Is it just because my father offered me up as payment?”

 

“I didn’t have to make a pact with your father, you know?” Charity says to her in reply, catching both of Vanessa’s hands the second she drops the cloth back into the basin. “I would have killed him normally. Men try and make deals like that every day with me, you know, their children, their wives for their own lives, and I’ve never once said yes. But Frank offered you, Vanessa, and you were… I saw you for the first time a few moons ago, the first time I met with him, and you were _different_. Different from the thousands of girls that have been thrown at my feet for hundreds of years. So different that I wanted you the moment I saw you. So different that I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else having you. So different that I would have come for you with or without your father’s deal, in the end.”

 

“Do you mean it?” Vanessa asks, swallowing thickly as Charity’s hands move to her waist, pulling her closer between her thighs.

 

“I do,” Charity says clearly, smoothly, and she takes Vanessa’s hand between them, raising it to her mouth with the intent of placing a kiss to it, but she freezes half-way, her eyes clouding with something like anger.

 

Her eyes find the new glow in the stone of Vanessa’s ring and Charity turns their joint hands quickly, finding a similar glow to her own. Vanessa feels an almost tangible shift move through the room then as something deep and dangerous lights in Charity’s chest, her skin almost too hot against Vanessa’s own.

 

“Did you eat the fruit, Vanessa?” Charity asks as her grip tightens almost painfully around Vanessa’s hand and she whips her head, looking for the plate of food Vanessa had tasted earlier, her voice is different to a second ago, desperate and quick. "Did you eat the fruit?"

 

 

_to be continued..._

 

-


	2. two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charity returns home and Vanessa seals their fates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready for a bit of drama. And maybe don't read this at work...

-

 

**μέσος**

**Mésos**

**(a middle)**

 

-

 

_“Did you eat the fruit, Vanessa?” Charity asks as her grip tightens almost painfully around Vanessa’s hand and she whips her head, looking for the plate of food Vanessa had tasted earlier, her voice is different to a second ago, desperate and quick. "Did you eat the fruit?"_

 

-

 

“Yes, I did, but-” Vanessa replies calmly, trying to soothe Charity too, but it barely touches the sides of her anger.

 

“You _stupid_ girl,” Charity snaps, and she tries to pull her hand free from Vanessa’s, but Vanessa isn’t having an inch of it.

 

“I know what it means, Charity,” Vanessa tells her with as much sternness she can muster, holding Charity’s hand tight enough to make her own ache. Her other hand stays on Charity’s shoulder as she refuses to move from between Charity’s thighs, anything to make Charity listen. “I know exactly what it means. That’s why did it, while you weren’t here, while it was my decision to make.”

 

Half of the fight goes out of Charity at that moment, her whole body uncoiling, her eyes softening, her hold on Vanessa’s hand easing as she looks down, the red retreating from around her eyes.

 

“You knew?” Charity asks her, the disbelief in her voice taking Vanessa by surprise. “You knew what eating it would mean?”

 

“I knew,” Vanessa confirms, taking Charity’s hand, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, to her palm, before she sets it over her heart. “I wanted you too, you know? I saw you in that field, and I’ve never seen anything so beautiful or dangerous. I knew that-“

 

Charity’s kiss catches her by surprise. So do the hands sliding into her hair, and Charity’s tongue baying for entrance at her bottom lip, but it doesn’t take Vanessa long to respond in kind, it doesn’t take her long to realise that kissing Charity isn’t like anything she’s ever felt before.

 

Every movement feels smoother than soft flowing water, the way she parts her lips to allow Charity’s tongue in, the groan than slips from her chest, the way Charity’s hands untangle from her hair to move back to her waist so she can turn Vanessa around. Vanessa’s back hits the low piece of furniture, and Charity lifts her onto it effortlessly, wrapping Vanessa’s legs around her waist before pulling her close, their hips locking together.

 

“You’re mine,” Charity growls, her kisses slipping from Vanessa’s lips to her jaw, her hands moving to Vanessa’s chin, tilting it, baring her throat to the onslaught of her teeth and her tongue.

 

It’s intoxicating, Charity’s desire for her, the carnality radiating from every place her mouth and hands touch, and it’s all Vanessa can do to stop herself shamelessly squirming in Charity’s arms.

 

“I’m yours,” Vanessa gasps when Charity’s teeth close around her pulse, biting into the skin of her neck, her hands tangling in Charity’s hair, holding her in place. “Charity, I’m all yours.”

 

Charity has her off the dresser the second the last syllable leaves Vanessa’s lips, her hands curving around her backside, carrying her over to the bed. The nightshirt Vanessa is wearing rides dangerously high in their transition, almost bunched completely at her hips, and Vanessa wonders if she looks as dishevelled as she feels.

 

Charity lowers her to the bed, sliding her hand up Vanessa’s leg, her lips brushing the thin strap of the gown off her shoulder. “This is what you want?” Charity asks against her skin, throwing a heated glance up to Vanessa as her hand creeps higher up the outside of Vanessa’s thigh.

 

“It’s all I want,” Vanessa confirms desperately, nodding, pulling Charity’s mouth to hers again, groaning when Charity’s tongue pushes into her mouth.

 

Vanessa isn’t sure if it’s an indicator of relatively poor lovers in the past, or Charity’s prowess, or the new power thrumming through her body, but everything about this feels different from anything she’s felt before. Charity’s hands are burning as they move over her skin, her mouth like a furnace, and it feels like she’s everywhere, in Vanessa’s head, in her lungs, preempting exactly where Vanessa wants to be touched next.

 

Charity’s hand cups one of Vanessa’s breasts, palming it roughly in a way that makes Vanessa arch her back sharply in search of more as Charity’s mouth finds the other, her teeth teasing Vanessa’s nipple through the thin fabric of her shift.

 

“I want you too much to take my time, Vanessa,” Charity growls, leaning back between Vanessa’s thighs, sliding her hands to Vanessa’s knees, teasing them apart a fraction wider, not because she needs the space, but because she can.

 

“We’ve got forever to take our time, haven’t we?” Vanessa replies, and she knows that her voice is a mess, but she’s teetering on the edge of sanity with Charity staring at her so openly.

 

“Not a scrap on underneath,” Charity says in a sing-song voice, biting her lip and admiring her view, dragging her forefinger over Vanessa’s knee, up the inside of her thigh. “I might be forgiven for thinking this was your plan all along, love.”

 

“Maybe it was,” Vanessa returns boldly, hooking her foot around Charity’s behind, tugging her forward, and she knows that Charity has better balance than to fall, but she comes to Vanessa regardless, a wicked smile on her lips and trouble on her breath.

 

“You really are something, aren’t you,” Charity offers, wrapping her hand around Vanessa’s chin, pulling her forward for a deep kiss.

 

“Maybe I wanted to make sure I made an impression,” Vanessa says, breathless, rolling her hips up against Charity’s even though she knows it’s fruitless. She won’t get a lick of friction until Charity wants to give it.

 

“You made an impression, alright,” Charity husks back, and Vanessa can tell from the grin on her face that Charity is a second away from giving her what she wants. “You’ve made a hell of one, but it’s my turn to leave one now.”

 

Quicker than she can follow, Charity settles properly between her thighs, and her hand moves down, down, down, until it meets, until it _slides_ against Vanessa’s core.

 

“My, my,” Charity growls when she feels Vanessa, the sound of it moving through Vanessa’s chest like a low, deep rumble.

 

Vanessa knows she should be embarrassed, she knows how wet she’ll be, but she can’t find it in herself to give it much more thought, because Charity’s touching her, finally touching her, and she thinks she might just lose her mind.

 

Charity’s hands were burning before, but they feel like something else entirely when they move through the heaviness collected between her thighs, the warmth of her touch the sweetest juxtaposition between the flush of Vanessa’s own skin, and the gasp that leaves Vanessa when her fingers begin to move properly is desperate, completely involuntary, and loud.

 

She catches the end of it though, smothering it, biting it back between her teeth sharply, and Charity finds her eye almost instantly, a supremely smug look in her eyes.

 

“Use your voice, Vanessa,” Charity says softly, her lips an inch away from Vanessa’s, but not touching. Teasing, instead. “Speak. No one’s going to hear you down here.”

 

Vanessa thinks about holding it down still, she thinks about making Charity work just a little bit harder for it, but then Charity drops her mouth, her tongue hungry against Vanessa’s neck, sucking the skin tight against her teeth, moving along a jagged line from the juncture of her throat all the way along to her shoulder, and the moan escapes without her permission.

 

Charity laughs against her chest, the sound like far-away music before moving back across to the other side of her body in search of virgin, unblemished flesh to ruin. The skin there will be a mess in the morning, if there even is morning here, but Vanessa doesn’t care, she wants the marks, the brand from Charity’s mouth, will wear it as proudly as she wears the ring on her hand.

 

The touch disappears between her legs for a moment and Vanessa gasps audibly at its loss before Charity’s hands appear under her chin, balling in the fine fabric of her shift. She throws Vanessa one devilish wink before tearing the silk as easily as though it were nothing. It makes Vanessa’s breath falter, the show of strength, the careless disregard for her clothing, and she feels herself grow wetter and wetter still.

 

Charity’s adjustment exposes significantly more of Vanessa’s chest to her lips, and she moves to cover it greedily, ripping the fabric down to her belly so she can take one of Vanessa’s breasts easily in her mouth, rolling her tongue lazily over the sensitive flesh, sinking her teeth into, _marking_ , the rest.

 

“You could have just taken that off, you know,” Vanessa offers breathlessly as one of Charity’s hand's snakes down the space between them to move between her thighs again, and she pushes her hips up into the touch.

 

“More fun this way, isn’t it,” Charity answers, lifting her mouth from Vanessa’s throat to do so. “Maybe I’ll make a thousand more, just to rip them off you.”

 

“Not a bit wasteful, are you?” Vanessa strains, her back bending so much that Charity’s hand slides up her stomach and presses down firmly, holding her against the bed as her fingers stroke and curl.

 

“Anything but, love,” Charity replies smoothly, licking a line up her neck until her teeth fix around Vanessa’s earlobe and drag down. “What better use for fabric than tearing it off a body like yours.”

 

Charity’s rampant desire for her is an added bonus to this whole situation Vanessa has found herself hopelessly lost in, it makes her own want for Charity justified, it makes it multiply almost out of control, too.

 

“What of your clothes, then?” Vanessa asks through a dangerously wavering tone, as Charity’s fingers move quicker, as she begins to feel a flutter at the base of her spine. “Do I get to tear those off you as well?”

 

“You can do whatever you please with them, love,” Charity replies, smiling broadly, looking slightly impressed with her for asking. “And with me too.”

 

Vanessa can’t help herself then, the offer, the anticipation of getting to touch Charity in return too much. She reaches up, sinking her hands into Charity’s already thoroughly mussed hair, adding to the chaos, drawing her down so she can kiss her deeply, so she can taste the wicked desperation on Charity’s tongue.

 

“Promise?” Vanessa asks her boldly, trailing her hands down Charity’s neck to her shoulder where her gown has a heavy tear through it, pushing the material aside and dragging her teeth across the now-healed pink skin.

 

Charity responds to the attention loudly above her and Vanessa feels herself glow in the light of it, that she might be able to bring a noise or two out of Charity when she gets her chance. Charity doesn’t give her long to contemplate it though, because Vanessa is hers now, _hers_ , and she kisses Vanessa hard to demonstrate that, just who’s in charge for the time being. The kiss turns softer at the end though, so does Charity’s whole body above hers, and Vanessa’s slows in anticipation in kind, like a mirror, a short whine slipping out before she can catch it at Charity slowing when she’s _so_ close.

 

“There’s an animal in you, Vanessa, I know there is,” Charity says sweetly. Her fingers dip lower, teasing Vanessa’s entrance like this is a game to her, like this is all a game and Vanessa isn’t losing her mind below her, writhing against the bed. “I want to see her, love. Show her to me.”

 

The fingers that were holding back push in, two thick, over Charity’s last word, and Vanessa groans loud, surprising herself with the roughness of the sound, the complete and utter lack of control in it. Charity takes that, and the way that Vanessa’s hands tighten in the back of her gown for the affirmation she was waiting for, picking up a devastatingly quick pace, driving hard, almost relentlessly into her.

 

The burn is the single most satisfying thing Vanessa has felt in her life, and she stretches her body long to savour it, her muscles lengthening, bones cracking, presenting her bare chest to Charity’s mouth when she does so, but it doesn’t linger for long as she starts to welcome each thrust of Charity’s hands.

 

“There she is,” Charity breathes, her irises flashing red around the green, her skin shimmering for a fraction of a second that Vanessa only _just_ catches through her haze.

 

She looks so wonderfully pleased with herself as Vanessa’s movements become hopelessly erratic, when her hips start chasing Charity’s hand, when they come up to meet her. She’s good at this, Charity is, very, very good, she knows exactly when to curl her fingers at the end of each stroke, knows exactly when to lay a messy kiss to Vanessa’s neck in a way that makes her legs shake at the same time.

 

It won’t be long now, the rise and fall of Vanessa’s chest premonition of that, and Vanessa knows that Charity can sense that too, maybe even better than she can herself. She curls herself closer around Vanessa, until Vanessa can feel her presence across every inch of her body, like Charity’s not just there with her, like she’s under her skin, too.

 

“Use that sweet voice of yours when you come, Vanessa,” Charity coos, and Vanessa’s heart stops. “Show me how much you like this.”

 

It could have been either of them: Charity’s voice, rich like honey, or her clever, clever fingers, but Vanessa comes hard around them, and she doesn’t attempt to dampen her scream one bit.

 

“I’m going to draw every bit of that wildness out of you before I’m through,” Charity whispers against her lips as she leads Vanessa along her release and into the next, as Vanessa tenses around Charity, as her whole body ripples with it. “Every. Last. Bit.”

 

She doesn’t let go of Charity’s gown until the final shudder moves through her, until Charity leaves one last gentle bite in her shoulder for good measure, until she feels Charity’s hand draw away reluctantly. Charity can’t help herself from turning something into a spectacle though, holding eye contact while she raises her fingers to her mouth, sucking both of them clean before falling onto her side next to Vanessa.

 

“Every inch of you is sweet, isn’t it?” Charity offers, more a statement than a question, and Vanessa almost has to shake her head to clear her mind of the image left by Charity licking her lips, licking _her_ off her lips.

 

“Wouldn't know, would I?” Vanessa asks coyly, as her eyes drink in the sight of Charity next to her, close enough that Vanessa can see every inch of godliness in her skin.

 

It’s beginning to become something she can almost recognise, a flash of trouble in Charity’s eyes before she does something reckless, and Vanessa catches a wisp of it before Charity leans in and kisses her hard. Her tongue is against Vanessa’s in a second, her hand around the back of Vanessa’s neck to hold her in place, and Vanessa groans when she realises the saltiness on Charity’s tongue is _her_.

 

“Now you do,” Charity says smugly, pulling back, her hand moving to trace the line of Vanessa’s jaw, stopping on her chin.

 

Charity pauses for a moment as Vanessa’s hand finds the curve of her waist, contemplating something, her eyes searching Vanessa’s face. Vanessa isn’t certain that she finds what she’s looking for, but she smiles and leans in to kiss Vanessa again, regardless.

 

She knows that she should be exhausted in spite of her sleep, can still feel the ache between her thighs where Charity’s fingers had been a moment ago, but the need to be close to Charity overrides that. The desire to have her is greater than the sum of anything else, and if the way Charity’s breathing picks up, and the depth of her kiss is anything to go by, she seems to feel exactly the same way.

 

Charity moves smoothly, rolling back on top of her, knees on either side of Vanessa’s hips this time, and Vanessa knows she has such a small window to make use of before she loses herself to the feeling of Charity’s hands on her body again, so she pushes herself onto her elbows before sitting up properly. Charity shuffles back to accommodate the new position, wrapping her arms around Vanessa’s shoulders with a smirk on her lips.

 

“You can have me every which way you please for the rest of the night, or whatever this is, but I want to feel you too, please,” Vanessa says, far more confidently than she actually feels, her hands moving from Charity’s hips, up her back to curl over her shoulders, so her fingers can slip under the edges of her gown.

 

“By all means, love,” Charity replies, looking faintly amused and, Vanessa thinks with a jolt, a little surprised too.

 

She slides one of her hands up to the back of Charity’s neck, fisting in her hair and pulling her down, and Charity responds beautifully, kissing Vanessa desperately, rolling her hips against Vanessa’s in a way that makes them both groan. Her hands move to push the ruined fabric off Charity’s shoulders while Charity’s teeth find her bottom lip, dragging it down her arms until Charity draws away with a soft growl, pulling her arms free hastily.

 

Vanessa takes the opportunity to run her eyes over the vision rising over her hips. She doesn’t think Charity will ever look more breathtaking than she does right now, her cheeks flushed an unnatural red, her eyes black and her chest heaving, her gown half-way off, _just_ covering her breasts still.

 

Charity looks down to her own chest before turning her gaze back to Vanessa and it’s a challenge, she knows it is, so she spreads her hands wide on Charity’s back and tugs her closer, until she can taste the sweet skin against her tongue. It’s warmer than anything else Vanessa’s touched so far, it’s hot against her lips, and she doesn’t bother with any hesitancy or nervousness, savouring the feeling of it as voraciously as Charity had tasted her, dragging her teeth along the supple flesh.

 

“Look at you,” Vanessa hears Charity mutter above her as her hands curve around Vanessa’s skull, holding her in place. “There she is already, my beast. And I didn’t even have to draw her out this time.”

 

“Hush,” Vanessa says, biting more firmly, smirking when Charity jumps just a little under her hands.

 

“No,” Charity returns sharply above her, and Vanessa pulls back to see a marvellously smug look on her face.

 

She rolls her eyes before her fingers curl under the edge of Charity’s gown, sliding them around to her sides so that when she pulls down, the whole garment shifts down to Charity’s waist, exposing all of her to Vanessa. Her hands move for the smoothness of Charity’s breasts before anything else because they look close to perfect, even with the scars that litter her torso and chest.

 

“I thought you were…” Vanessa says, almost speechless, her fingers tracing scar after scar gently.

 

“I can’t be harmed by humans, Vanessa,” Charity replies, and there’s a softness to her voice that Vanessa hadn’t been expecting. “My father and my brothers are different. We can harm each other just fine if we wish to. We heal from those wounds, but far more slowly. And we scar, just like a human would.”

 

It steals her coherency from her, just how many of them there are though, because they cover almost every inch of Charity’s skin when Vanessa looks closely. Some of the lines are fine and some thick, and it makes her heart ache, to think of Charity here, trying to nurse each and every one of them alone.

 

“Did they hurt?” Vanessa asks as her thumb finds a particularly deep scar just under Charity’s right breast.

 

“Of course they did,” Charity replies, clenching her teeth when she does so, and Vanessa can feel a ripple of anger pass through her like a heatwave beneath her hands. “My brothers don’t like to fight fair very often. One of them is fond of using poison from some of those dreadful sea creatures of his.”

 

“There are so many,” Vanessa says as she looks more closely at Charity’s neck, catching the fine tendrils of one or two at her throat as well.

 

“Families are complicated, aren’t they,” Charity says with a shrug, obviously unconcerned with her nakedness, or her scars, or the viciousness of her family. “We don’t exactly get along. Why do you think I’m down here? Why do you think my father is in his prison like he is?”

 

“I never thought…” Vanessa trails off again, her palm flat over Charity’s heart, soothed by the strong, proud way it thumps against her hand.

 

“Nobody ever does,” Charity says, and she tries to sound nonchalant, but Vanessa can hear the anger easily enough. “Nobody ever bothers. We’re just gods to everyone, aren’t we? We’re not allowed to feel. We’re not allowed to scream.”

 

“I’m not everyone,” Vanessa offers softly, pressing a kiss to Charity’s breast. She’s expecting Charity to push her and her gentleness away, to put her hands on Vanessa’s shoulders and hold her back so she can’t repeat her action, but she doesn’t.

 

There’s no objection, there’s no argument, no snide reply, she just allows Vanessa to place kiss after kiss over the scars, until finally her hands tighten in Vanessa’s hair and she beckons Vanessa backwards.

 

“No, you really aren’t, are you?” Charity says to her almost curiously, like she can’t make sense of the strange creature in front of her. “Who are you?”

 

“You tell me,” Vanessa returns with what she hopes is a flash of fire in her eyes, dropping her mouth to Charity’s chest again, her kisses harder this time.

 

“I think you’re mine,” Charity replies easily, tipping Vanessa’s head back so she can taste her again, long and deep and slow.

 

“Suppose that makes you mine, too,” Vanessa says, her voice shaky when Charity moves away, trailing her finger down the hollow made by her ripped nightgown.

 

“I suppose it does,” Charity replies, running her fingers through Vanessa’s hair, twisting a strand around her forefinger as she speaks. “Or maybe I’m not yours until you claim me.”

 

“You’re mine now,” Vanessa affirms quickly, crashing her lips against Charity’s. “You’re mine, and don’t you forget that, but I’ll not argue the chance to claim you anyway.”

 

“I wouldn’t dare,” Charity breathes against her lips, as Vanessa feels a ripple of something otherworldly pass through both of them. “My _Queen._ ”

 

“Your Queen?” Vanessa asks, and it’s a thrill bigger than she can articulate, to hear Charity speak like that for her.

 

About her.

 

“Aren’t you?” Charity questions, as Vanessa feels completely bare before the intensity of Charity’s gaze.

 

“Yes,” Vanessa replies sweetly. She concentrates the strength of her body in her core, calling on some of the power she knows is imbibed in the ring on her finger, rolling them both, flipping Charity onto her back. “I am. Don’t you forget that, either.”

 

Vanessa pushes up off the bed, her hands either side of Charity’s head, pausing to kiss her again, to savour the feeling of their bare breasts pressed together. She can feel a rumbled laugh issue from Charity’s chest when Charity’s hands find her hips in their new position, settling comfortably over them like they’ve been doing this dance for years, and not hours.

 

“And she just keeps on surprising me,” Charity says under her breath, her hands slipping down Vanessa’s thighs, pushing the ruined nightdress up so she can rest her hands on her bare backside. “Do you really think I could forget that, Vanessa? The sweetest thing to touch my lips, the sweetest thing to happen to me in centuries? No, I might forget everything else, love, but that you’re mine? I won’t ever forget that.”

 

“Good,” Vanessa replies warmly, surprised at the genuineness in Charity’s gaze, in the way that Charity’s touch seems to glow against her skin. “Well then, I’d best give you something else you’re not likely to forget then, hadn’t I?”

 

“And what might that be, Vanessa?” Charity asks, tilting her head against the pillow beneath it, looking at her curiously.

 

“I don’t think it’s something I can tell you,” Vanessa whispers in her ear, bending low so she feels the whole of Charity’s upper body like a furnace against her own. “I think it’s something I have to show you.”

 

Charity opens her mouth to say something but Vanessa silences her before she can speak, stealing the words and her next breath, and taking them both into her own lungs. She moves her hands down Charity’s sides as she does so, taking the tattered remains of her dress with her, marvelling at how smooth the fabric feels  when she drags it off and over Charity’s raised hips, gulping at the unguarded look of desire on Charity’s face when she moves back up her now completely naked body.

 

“How is it that you’re still clothed?” Charity asks with a frown when Vanessa slides between her thighs. “That’s not an inch fair, is it?”

 

“What are you going to do about it?” Vanessa challenges, and for a moment she thinks she might have gotten away with having the last word, but then Charity raises her hand and snaps her fingers, and the torn fragments of her own nightgown disappear in a puff of smoke.

 

“Don’t give me that look,” Charity says smartly, scratching her nails across Vanessa’s now-naked belly. “What did you think was going to happen?”

 

“Maybe I wanted you to take it off me properly?” Vanessa pouts, and Charity licks her lips in reply.  

 

“I’ll do that later, love” Charity offers, sliding her hands up to cup both of Vanessa’s breasts fully. “I’ll put it back on so I can take it off with my teeth, if you’d like?”

 

“You’re distracting me,” Vanessa quips, taking both of Charity’s hands, pressing them into the bed either side of her shoulders, and Charity looks mildly impressed at the show of force.

 

“So stop me,” Charity shrugs casually, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, to stop the Queen of the Underworld from doing anything.

 

Only, she thinks it might be, just this once. Easy to distract her, that is.

 

Holding her nerve as tightly as she can to stop it slipping, Vanessa allows her hand to slide down Charity’s inner thigh as her lips drop to cover Charity’s collarbone. She feels Charity tense under her touch and she looks up to her quickly, finding a broad pleased grin on Charity’s lips, and it spurs Vanessa on, so desperate to wipe the smile off her face and replace it with something else entirely.

 

She won’t deny that she’s not nervous though. She’s not a maiden, not by a long shot, but she can’t claim to have anywhere near the wealth of experience she knows that Charity can call on either, and the thought of that stalls her hand just short of where she knows Charity is desperately willing it.

 

“Stop thinking, Vanessa,” Charity says to her firmly but not unkindly, and the clarity in her voice cuts through everything else. “Nobody else matters now. Nobody. We might as well be the last two people on earth.”

 

“Can you read my mind?” Vanessa asks curiously, because it wouldn’t surprise her if she could.

 

“Near enough,” Charity laughs, sliding her hands over Vanessa’s thighs as they rise up around her body. “You wear your heart in your eyes. You look worried.”

 

“I’m no-” Vanessa begins, but Charity cuts her off quickly.

 

“Don’t lie,” Charity says smoothly, and Vanessa blushes at being caught.

 

“I’m not worried,” Vanessa says more clearly, and Charity allows her to finish the sentence, watching her carefully. “Nervous, maybe. You have a rather-”

 

“It. Doesn’t. Matter. Nothing else in the world matters to me now. Believe me when I say I’ve searched every corner of this earth looking for you, Vanessa. For a match,” Charity explains slowly, placing her hands either side of Vanessa’s face, and Vanessa knows without a shadow of a doubt that Charity is telling her the truth.  

 

She sighs heavily before she continues, and Vanessa knows that whatever she’s about to say is important. “I’ve felt hundreds of hands on my body over the centuries, to harm me, to please me, and they all felt like ash, love. Like dust. Cold and brittle and meaningless. And then you walk in like you own the place and you touch me and for the first time in my life, I felt hands that were _warm_. I’m not a sentimental fool, I’m the farthest thing this world has from an innocent, but even I know that means something.”

 

Charity’s hands find Vanessa’s, holding them between their bodies. She watches the way the light plays through the stone on Vanessa’s finger, the way it dances and moves, fluid and solid all at the same time, before she looks to Vanessa again.

 

“When I say nothing else matters, I’m not saying it for the good of our health,” Charity says dryly, even though the sentiment is deep. “I don’t say things I don’t mean because I don’t have to. If I tell you something, it’s the truth, Vanessa. Nothing less than that. Because I have shared my bed with more doomed souls than I can count, and not one of them has made me feel. But you…”

 

She trails off, teasing her teeth in Vanessa’s bottom lip before her tongue slides in and claims what is hers, until Vanessa responds in kind.  

 

“Like I said before. You’re _different_ , love,” Charity finishes, smiling against Vanessa’s lips.

 

“I’m different?” Vanessa asks, and she uses the momentum of Charity’s admission, of the significance of it to drive her hand down between Charity’s thighs, until it finds a heat she hadn’t been expecting.

 

“Yessss,” Charity hisses, more animal than not, tipping her head back against the bed, arching her back sharply at the relief of that first touch.

 

It’s easier than she thought, to flex her fingers and test Charity, to tease out what she likes and what she groans at, to settle into a rhythm that has Charity rocking against her hand as soon as she does, so much so that she wonders again how deeply this connection between the two of them goes.

 

Because she has to listen, but when she does she can anticipate what it is that Charity’s straining for next, what will make her breath come quicker, what will make the heat in her core burn against Vanessa’s fingers.

 

The nakedness helps immensely because they almost feel like one body and not two once the last scrap disappears between them, once there’s nothing to stop every inch of them touching. Vanessa leans down, taking Charity’s breast into her mouth, her teeth scraping wetly over Charity’s nipple and the moan that escapes from Charity when she does shakes the foundation stones of the palace.

 

She’s more responsive than Vanessa had thought she would be, more encouraging, she gives Vanessa praise from the moment she touches Charity to the moment she comes, soft and harsh choruses of _yes_ and _there, just there, stay there_ and _harder_ that give Vanessa just the right amount of affirmation.

 

She’s hot and soft and all-consuming when Vanessa finally stops teasing and gives Charity the thing she sharply calls for, sliding inside and feeling Charity pull around her fingers. Vanessa watches her back bend and her hands tear the sheets to pieces when she demands more, and Vanessa gives it willingly, feeling Charity tense hungrily around her when she adds a third.

 

Charity leaves angry marks over her shoulders and her neck as Vanessa drives her towards her release, on every inch of skin she can get her hands on or her mouth to. Some of the bites are so sharp Vanessa is almost certain she must have broken the skin, but she doesn’t stop or slow for a second, because Charity wants _faster, Vanessa, faster_ , and Vanessa is only too happy to oblige.

 

The muscles in her arm are screaming when Vanessa feels Charity start to pull more desperately around her fingers, when her moans lengthen, when the veins in her neck stand out in striking relief, but Vanessa pushes harder, and harder and harder, until Charity comes with a choked gasp, soft like ground powder around Vanessa’s fingers, her nails dragging a scalding line down Vanessa’s back.

 

She pulls Charity through the shaking of her body until there’s nothing more to give, collapsing against Charity after, her chin tucked into the curve of Charity’s shoulder as she tries to catch her breath.

 

Charity’s hands are softer at her back now, her fingers tracing the healing lines left by her nails a moment ago, her lips likewise following the teeth marks in Vanessa’s shoulders.

 

“Colour me impressed, love,” Charity says eventually, once their breath evens and falls into step. “Colour me very impressed.”

 

“Didn’t think I had it in me?” Vanessa asks, lifting herself away just slightly so she can look down at Charity.

 

“Didn’t know what you had in you, to be honest,” Charity says, and it’s not unkind, but it makes Vanessa frown curiously.

 

“What did you find?” Vanessa asks innocently, moving her thigh against the pulsing heat between Charity’s.

 

“Something I like very much,” Charity returns, something distinctly not-human intertwined around her words in a way that makes Vanessa shiver, even wrapped in warmth like she is.

 

“How much?” Vanessa questions as Charity’s thigh slides between her legs now, on the edge of reversing their positions neatly again.

 

“Close your eyes, Vanessa,” Charity whispers once Vanessa is on her back, looking up and seeing false stars shining for her in the space above them as Charity’s hands burn a new path down her body. “And I’ll show you.”

 

  
-

  


Vanessa supposes that being the Queen of your own domain must come with its rewards, not having to leave the bed for what feels like days being one of them.

 

She does try and suggest a reluctant break in their activities a few times, but they’re half-hearted when she does, weak and completely without enthusiasm, because all Vanessa wants to do for the rest of time is bend and arch against Charity in these sheets. She gets as far as putting a dress on once, even has her hand on the door handle before Charity materialises next to her, pushing Vanessa’s back up against the door, dropping to her knees and tasting Vanessa where she stands.

 

It must be days later, once Charity has kissed every inch of skin on Vanessa’s body, and Vanessa hers, before they finally part for longer than a few moments.

 

Charity is kissing a torturously slow path down Vanessa’s stomach when she feels Charity shiver unprompted against her, watching the hair on the back of her neck stand to attention in the seconds that follow.

 

“What is it?” Vanessa asks at once, her hands on Charity’s shoulders, trying to bend her knees to bring Charity up to her eye level, but Charity isn’t having an inch of it.

 

She pushes Vanessa’s thighs back down against the bed, pinning them there with a growled _nothing, love._ Undeterred, Charity continues her ministrations with complete attentiveness, kissing the curve of Vanessa’s hip bone before she hisses sharply in pain and Vanessa feels the ache of it in her chest, too.

 

“Charity,” Vanessa says more forcefully this time, and this time Charity listens, already moving back up her body to fall against Vanessa’s side, rubbing one of the deeper scars over her rib cage.

 

“It’s my brother,” Charity reveals between clenched teeth, her nails digging into her skin in an attempt to cancel out some of the pain with her own action.

 

“Is he calling you?” Vanessa asks curiously, taking Charity’s hand away and replacing it with her own, pressing hard against the marred skin.

 

“He wants to meet me soon,” Charity answers, rolling onto her back with a huff. “To ask about you, I suspect. And where I’ve been.”

 

“Will you tell him?” Vanessa asks, and she can’t pinpoint why, but it puts fear in her chest, the idea of it. “Why does he want to know? Am I in….”

 

“You’re not in danger, Vanessa,” Charity says firmly, leaning up, taking Vanessa’s face in her hands. “I promise you that. Especially not while you’re here. No one can come down here without my permission, save you, not even my family. No, I suspect he just wants to know why I took a wife now. Whether that means anything for him, of course.”

 

“Do you have to go now?” Vanessa questions, leaning into the touch against her face. It fills her with a dread, the idea of Charity leaving her.

 

“Not just yet, love,” Charity assures her, pressing a hard kiss to Vanessa’s lips. “But soon, I will. I don’t think I’ll be long, however.”

 

“Good,” Vanessa says, pulling Charity on top of her. “I know you have duties out there, but you have them in here now, too.”

 

“I’m well aware of those, don’t you worry,” Charity hums, the sound bone warming as she presses her mouth to Vanessa’s throat. “I’ll be back here as fast as I can be.”

 

“How long do we have?” Vanessa asks, tilting her head back to give Charity a clear path down to her bare breasts.

 

“Long enough for me to make you come again,” Charity offers before her teeth close around Vanessa’s neck, as she slips inside, her fingers curling, _calling_. “And maybe once more after that.”

  


-

  


“Is there a bath here?” Vanessa asks with slightly strained breath when Charity crawls back up her body some time later, wiping delicately at the corner of her mouth.

 

Charity’s expression turns mischievous, tilting her head to and fro. “Of a sort,” she says with a smirk, before snapping her fingers, shifting both she and Vanessa instantly into a softly glowing hot spring.

 

“Is this in the palace?” Vanessa asks breathlessly, looking around with wide-eyes, trying not to look as completely awed as she feels.

 

The cave, Vanessa thinks that’s the best way to describe the place, even though it’s nowhere near as unluxurious as that name might suggest, is massive. Enormously high ceilings tower over a number of steaming hot pools of various sizes that sit at different elevations around the space, some wide enough for a thousand people, some only big enough for two.

 

The cave itself is made from the same marble that has surrounded Vanessa since she arrived, but it looks different down here. The stone is rougher in greater quantities than Vanessa has seen anywhere else, rising up in great stalagmites off of the cave floor, hanging from the ceiling in massive reverse pyramids too. Most of the ground is smooth enough to walk on with the bare feet Vanessa has, but there are parts of much sharper stone at the edges of some of the pools, and around the masses of stone that seem to erupt out of the ground.

 

She wonders whether the stone was all rough to begin with, and has only become smooth from centuries of Charity walking a lonely path around them all.

 

Vanessa only becomes aware of the soft robe draped over her shoulders and around her body when Charity’s hand settles against it at her lower back, pressing gently and leading her towards one of the smaller pools.

 

“You’re welcome to find the pool more to your liking if this one isn’t quite right,” Charity says as she leads Vanessa to the one that looks the most inviting to her eye. “But this is my favourite.”

 

It’s deep but not too deep, enough that at one end Vanessa could slip fully beneath the water and submerge herself while standing up, but there’s a shallow end that emulates a bath as well, the stone curved to create a smaller pool within the slightly larger one. Vanessa can see a small pile of things, oils, a few large towels and another robe next to this pool, although she imagines those things would appear next to whichever pool she choose if it wasn’t this one.

 

She casts her eye around the others, genuinely curious, but something about this pool calls her like a siren song, probably not in small part due to the fact that she knows this is Charity’s favourite, that she will have made use of the deliciously warm looking water, completely bare, thousands of times since coming to this place.

 

“I like this one,” Vanessa says firmly, turning in Charity’s arms to look at her. “How long do we have before you have to-“

 

“Long enough,” Charity assures her with eyes that glow in the low light that seems to issue from around the pools themselves, her hands pulling the tie of Vanessa’s robe slowly until it comes free and Vanessa can feel the rush of warm air on the now-naked strip between her breasts.

 

Charity’s eyes drop to the bare flesh and she licks her lips before bending down, supporting Vanessa with the hand on her lower back, dipping Vanessa so that her back arches against Charity’s hand. Charity leans in to taste the skin, her tongue swirling, teeth nipping, and Vanessa feels her knees grow weak but she knows Charity is strong enough to catch her if they do, closing her eyes and giving herself completely to the sensation.

 

Charity’s hand traces a line down her body with her fingertips, not stopping when she crosses the expanse of Vanessa’s stomach, not stopping over the curve of her pubic bone, not stopping when she meets wickedly hot flesh, either.

 

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Vanessa groans as Charity slips inside her with little ceremony, crooking her fingers in a way that steals Vanessa’s breath away.

 

“I’m not,” Charity smiles against the hollow at the base of her throat, and in the blink of an eye, she has Vanessa in her arms.

 

“What are you-“ Vanessa asks, but it becomes obvious when Charity - with Vanessa in her arms - steps up onto the ledge at the edge of the pool, taking another step into the water, and another, until they’re both submerged to the waist.

 

The fabric spreads out on the surface of the water, and it looks so abstractly beautiful that Vanessa can’t take her eyes off it for a moment, staring until she feels Charity shift her in her arms. She moves to sit on the ledge in the water that separates the deeper water from the shallower, pulling Vanessa into her lap, so Vanessa’s thighs are either side of Charity’s. She bobs, buoyant in the water, tethered by Charity’s hands at her waist holding her over her body.

 

“Do you have complete disregard for all clothes?” Vanessa asks as Charity pushes the wet robe off her shoulders, snapping her fingers once she’s removed it by hand, the robe appearing completely dry next to the pool. “Or just some of them?”

 

“Only the ones that stop me from seeing you completely,” Charity answers her smugly, her eyes watching as Vanessa does the same thing for her, Charity’s robe floating away from them once Vanessa has freed it from her body.

 

Vanessa opens her mouth to object to her wastefulness playfully but Charity is quicker. Before Vanessa can make a sound, one of Charity’s hands finds Vanessa’s lower back, tugging her closer, and the other parts her thighs and slides between them.

 

“As much as I’d like to have you across every inch of this place, I really do need to go,” Charity coos as her fingers dip and tease before pushing in, her voice genuinely remorseful. “But I don’t want you to forget for a second, that the only thing I’ll have on my mind the entire time I’m gone is the way that you feel around my fingers, Vanessa. About what you taste like on my tongue, and how I’m going to fuck you senseless when I return.”

 

Charity has this way with words, Vanessa is beginning to learn, that can have as much of an impact on her as her touch does, and she wonders again whether it’s magic, period, or simply the magic of their connection.

 

Regardless, it’s almost too much, and Vanessa folds under her own lust, her body relying on the strength of Charity’s completely, leaning against her, her head falling to Charity’s shoulder as her fingers bring her to the point of ecstasy.

 

She’s not wasting any time getting Vanessa there, not this time, drawing her orgasm swiftly, her fingers driving, her hand at Vanessa’s lower back leading her onto her fingers with every thrust, putting a good lick of her strength into the gesture so that Vanessa is breathless with the way she almost crashes against Charity’s hand.

 

She comes with a choked gasp this time, clawing desperately at Charity’s shoulders as she holds her suspended in the water, the stability of her body beneath Vanessa’s trembling limbs concrete, like the rock all around them.

 

“Easy, Vanessa,” Charity whispers, her hand stroking the back of Vanessa’s neck when she brings her down from her high, when Vanessa’s breathing refuses to calm and slow. “It’s alright. Just breathe.”

 

“Simpler said than done, when you do things like that,” Vanessa pants, lifting her forehead off Charity’s shoulder to scowl at her. “I don’t know how I’m going to walk back to the room.”

 

“Don’t,” Charity says simply, shrugging, her hands soft on Vanessa’s hips now. “Just stay here until I return. Relax. Ease some of those knots in your back. I can take you back to our chambers when I come home.”

 

“Need I remind you why there are knots there in the first place?” Vanessa replies, digging her nails into the skin of Charity’s back just hard enough to make Charity smirk.

 

“Would you rather I left you to rest for a while, then?” Charity asks, her eyes alight with challenge. “I do have some self-control, I’ll have you know. I don’t have to touch you.”

 

“Oh no, you mustn’t ever stop,” Vanessa replies seriously, almost gravely. “I think I’d die if you did.”

 

“You can’t die, love,” Charity says, tipping her head back and laughing. “And a good thing that is, too, because I want to do that to you, with you, forever.”

 

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Vanessa admits somewhat shyly as Charity sways gently in the water with Vanessa in her arms, the movement calming, soothing, finally bringing Vanessa’s heart rate down.

 

“Neither did I,” Charity replies almost resentfully, and Vanessa finds that she’s slightly taken aback by the answer.

 

“You didn’t?” Vanessa asks, lifting her hand out of the water to trace the line of Charity’s lips. It makes her sad, the admission, but distantly glad too, at the fact that this is different for Charity, too. That none of her other lovers could give her what Vanessa can.

 

“I’ve felt pleasure before,” Charity explains, the frown on her forehead deepening. “But it’s always been hollow. Always. Fleeting. But this, with you, I feel your hands on me even when we’re not touching. I always thought my brothers were over exaggerating when they spoke of bedding, because it never felt as good to me. It was never enough to make me want to flout our rules, to create children we were forbidden from creating. It’s part of my curse, I think. That I couldn’t find that with just any human I took to my bed. That I could only find that with one.”

 

“Maybe it’s a blessing,” Vanessa says carefully. “Do you think you would feel the same way you do for me if every coupling was like this?”

 

“Yes,” Charity says easily. Quickly. Defiantly. “Even if I felt great pleasure with others…what we have doesn’t exist anywhere else, love, I know it doesn’t. It’s different. _You’re_ different.”

 

It’s a strange sense of pride that settles over Vanessa then, because Charity is a god, after all. A god. A _god_. And she thinks that of Vanessa.

 

“You’re different too,” Vanessa offers, and Charity scoffs but Vanessa is determined that she’ll hear this thing she has to say. She holds Charity’s face between her hands, waiting until the frown evens out before continuing. “You know I think that, don’t you? You’re not like they all think you are. I knew that the first time I saw you. There was something about you then that made me think there was a depth to you that others don’t bother to see.”

 

“I don’t show it to anyone else, love,” Charity says, sliding her fingers under Vanessa’s chin, lifting her head for a kiss. “That’s why they don’t see it. They need to see me as they do. They need to fear me. That’s where my power comes from, you know, their terror. Their hatred of me. It’s an eloquent curse, I’ll give my brothers and father that.”

 

“But you showed it to me,” Vanessa replies proudly, her eyes still closed when Charity takes her lips from hers finally.

 

“Not exactly a conscious decision,” Charity says, rolling her eyes as Vanessa smiles. “But I suppose I did.”

 

“I think it was conscious,” Vanessa returns, feeling a rush of boldness fall over her skin. “I think you wanted me to see you for who you really are.”

 

“Weaker?” Charity says in a self-deprecating tone that makes Vanessa tense.

 

“No,” Vanessa asserts firmly, not budging when Charity tries to shake herself from Vanessa’s hold. “That makes you strong, don’t you see? Letting someone in isn’t weakness. Not if it’s the right person. Not when they can make you stronger.”

 

“And you’re the right person are you, Vanessa?” Charity asks her challengingly. There’s a hardness to her eyes around the silk in her voice, and Vanessa understands that this, her self-loathing, it’s a test too.

 

“I think so,” Vanessa says, and she doesn’t know a thousand things, she doesn’t even know what she _is_ now, but she knows that she can give Charity things no one else can. That no one else would ever want to.

 

“You think so, do you?” Charity asks slowly, raising an eyebrow as her hands pull Vanessa closer to her so their bodies almost meet flush beneath the water.

 

“Yes,” Vanessa says, holding the immense weight of Charity’s gaze despite the fact that she feels herself buckle mentally beneath it. “I do.”

 

“Modesty is becoming, you know,” Charity hums against her lips when she leans in. “Aren’t all proper ladies supposed to be modest?”

 

“Suppose I’m not a proper lady then, am I?” Vanessa replies smoothly, using her grip around Charity’s shoulders as an anchor to pull herself closer against Charity, so that she can’t possibly miss the heat of Vanessa’s core against her stomach.

 

“I suppose not,” Charity says playfully, her hands moving to Vanessa’s lower back again, holding Vanessa tight against her so that Vanessa’s eyes flutter closed at the friction she creates. “I don’t think proper ladies scream like you do, love.”

 

Vanessa feels Charity’s hand slip around to her front, and it’s about to disappear between her thighs when Charity bites her own lip sharply, swearing under her breath.

 

“Is it-“ Vanessa asks as Charity puts some distance between them, her hands drifting to Vanessa’s hips before one comes up to wipe the bead of blood from her lip where she’s broken the skin.

 

“Yes,” Charity says with an instant sharpness to her muscles, no affection in her voice when she confirms her brother’s mental presence.

 

Her eyes soften when they meet the worried look in Vanessa’s though, and she licks the drop of blood off her finger before placing her hand on Vanessa’s cheek.

 

“I won’t be long,” Charity says with a tone that soothes her instantly, enough for Vanessa to realise there’s something else driving that calmness.

 

“Don’t do that,” Vanessa says crossly, shaking her head to clear the fog of whatever magic Charity gave over in an attempt to soothe the worry in her stomach. “You haven’t done that before. Don’t do it now.”

 

“I don’t want you to worry,” Charity replies and she doesn’t apologise exactly, but she does have the good grace to look a little guilty.

 

“I’ll worry if I want to worry,” Vanessa counters, the frown forming between her eyes, deepening with each passing second. “I don’t like this, Charity. Something feels…off.”

 

“It’ll be fine,” Charity says to her again, her thumb stroking over Vanessa’s cheekbone. “I’ll be fine.”

 

“Do you have to go?” Vanessa asks just before Charity buckles against her body, clutching the scar over her stomach, the worryingly deep one Vanessa had found earlier, cursing sharply under her breath.

 

“ _Alright_ , brother,” Charity snaps harshly, speaking upwards to the ceiling of the cave, and Vanessa wonders suddenly how much she can hear and see that Vanessa can’t. “I’m coming.”

 

She takes her hands away from her stomach reluctantly as if the skin and muscle were still tender, shaking the water from her hands sharply, trying to throw off the ache of pain before she turns back to Vanessa with a tight lip.

 

“I’ll see you soon, love,” Charity says, pressing one hard kiss to Vanessa’s cheek before she stands, the water cascading off her perfectly war-torn body.

 

She doesn’t bother wrapping herself in the robe or reaching for the towel at all, she gives Vanessa one last look that makes Vanessa want to reach for her, to stop her from leaving, because in that moment she knows that if she could only close her hand around Charity’s wrist, that would hold her in place.

 

But she doesn’t push through the water fast enough when she decides to move, Charity snaps her fingers quicker, disappearing in a cloud of smoke before Vanessa can do anything.

 

The water around her is hot, the steam rising from it tells her as much, but it feels tepid when Charity is gone, when she takes her almost volcanic heat away.

 

Vanessa sighs heavily as the smoke thins and disappears, the worry already creeping higher and higher in her chest, not stopping when she slips under the deeper water, when the only sound she can hear is her heartbeat thumping _dread_.

  


-

  


It’s days before Charity reappears, she thinks anyway, because time doesn’t seem to follow convention here,   and Vanessa is so beside herself with fret and fear when she finally appears in the middle of their bedchambers, that she’s of half a mind to kill Charity with her bare hands.

 

But then the smoke clears, and Charity is still on her knees, and Vanessa understands that someone might just have beaten her to it because Charity is curled over, her head lowered, protecting her stomach with her hands, a spear at least six foot long protruding from her back.

 

The red dress she must have put on after leaving Vanessa in the hot springs is in tatters across her body, but the cuts and tears in the fabric are difficult to see around the still bleeding wounds all over Charity’s body.

 

“Take us to the springs,” Vanessa says harshly, falling to her knees beside Charity, her hands hovering over Charity’s shaking body, looking for an inch of unharmed skin to rest them over, not able to find one.

 

“Vanessa,” Charity grits out, but she’s barely audible around her harsh and broken breathing.

 

“The springs, Charity,” Vanessa says fiercely, curling her hand around Charity’s shoulder hard, trying to ground her. “Now.”

 

Charity listens, thank the gods, or maybe it’s just that she’s in too much pain to argue. Vanessa hears a crack and the smell of sulfur, looking up to the soft light of the hot springs before she can blink.

 

“What on earth happened?” Vanessa asks, her hands shaking as Charity tries to straighten up, and Vanessa can see that her hands are gripped around the spear tip, a black jagged thing with what appear to be waves carved into the obsidian tip.

 

“He was jealous,” Charity bites out, looking up to Vanessa for the first time, her hair half-down around her face, streaks of blood on her cheeks and an almost healed cut across one of them. “My loving brother. Angry your father didn’t bargain with him. He wants you, you see, and I told him that he couldn’t have you. That it was too late, anyway, that you’d already eaten the fruit.”

 

“This happened because of me?” Vanessa asks, horrified, bile rising in her throat.

 

“This happened because he’s mad, Vanessa,” Charity says sharply, and it brings Vanessa back to the urgency of the moment.

 

“Why aren’t you healing?” Vanessa questions before the answer comes quickly to her panicking mind. “Because it was him, right? What can I… what can I do?”

 

“Yes,” Charity replies with a sigh, looking down to the spear tip in her hands. “Because it was him. And nothing. I need to take this out though. I won’t heal as long as his weapon is in the wound.”

 

“Take it out?” Vanessa says a little dumbly. She’s seen injuries before, she’s tended men and women after fights or battles, she’s seen worse than this, but it’s Charity that’s hurt this time, not someone she doesn’t care about. It’s someone close to her. Someone she lo…

 

“Yes, Vanessa. Take it out,” Charity replies tersely, and she flicks her gaze to Vanessa for a second, almost apologetic, but she averts her eyes quickly, looking back to the spear that Vanessa can now see is all made of the same material as the tip.

 

Vanessa can see the thought process cross Charity’s face the second before she acts.

 

Her hands move from tentatively perched on Charity’s shoulders, trying to snatch Charity’s hands away before she can do what Vanessa can see she’s trying to do, but Charity’s too quick for her. She wraps both of her hands around the weapon protruding from her stomach, sucking in one harsh breath before she exerts a significant amount of force, twisting her hands, and the spear breaks with a crystalline _crack_ , the arrowhead snapping off in Charity’s hands.

 

She drops it unceremoniously onto the marble at their feet, the sound of it almost melodic, before reaching around to her back, growling when her hand can only reach so far.

 

“You’re going to have to help me,” Charity says slowly, looking up to Vanessa, wiping a tear hastily off her cheek. “Or I’m going to have to pull the whole thing through this way. Can you do that, Vanessa?”

 

“Of course I can,” Vanessa replies quickly, leaning down to Charity’s level, placing one hand over Charity’s heart, her other hand on Charity’s back, close to the wound. “Are you ready now?”

 

“No time like the present, is there,” Charity mumbles under her breath before she looks at Vanessa with forcefully clear eyes. “Go on, love. Do it.”

 

Vanessa feels calmer now that she knows Charity is depending on her, but she takes a breath to steady herself regardless, closing her hand around the shaft at Charity’s back, her other hand moving down to rest over the exit wound, ready to push it back.

 

“One,” Vanessa says softly, speaking into Charity’s ear, her hair brushing Charity’s shoulder, hoping the closeness brings her some sense of comfort. “Tw-“

 

She pulls as hard as she can part way through her next word, pushing with her other hand, and after an initial resistance, she feels the spear slide freely. She draws it out of Charity as quickly and as smoothly as she can, until the weapon, covered in a light sheen of Charity’s blood, is in her hands, and she can throw that to the ground too alongside the spearhead.

 

Charity sags beneath her as soon as the spear is free, falling onto her hands and knees in front of Vanessa. She watches Charity draw in a few slow, pained breaths, one of which she swears she can hear a sob through, before she dares take a step towards Charity, sinking back down onto Charity’s level.

 

“I think we should get you into the water,” Vanessa urges as calmly as she can, watching the red of Charity’s gown grow redder around the wound at her back. “I know the warm water might make you bleed more, but I think we need to wash the wounds. If you just-“

 

“I can do it,” Charity breathes, pushing Vanessa’s hand away when she places it on her shoulder, and Vanessa tries not to let the abruptness of the gesture sting too badly. She knows Charity is in pain. She knows she doesn’t mean to be dismissive.

 

“I can help you,” Vanessa replies gently, moving closer to Charity when she tries to stand, reaching for her when she stumbles. “You don’t have to do anything, we just need to-“

 

“ _We_ don’t need to anything, Vanessa,” Charity snaps, pulling her arm out of Vanessa’s grip.

 

“I don’t mean you can’t, I just mean that I’m here, you don’t have to do this by yourself,” Vanessa returns, holding her hands up in supplication as Charity moves towards the pool, stepping up onto the ledge fully dressed.

 

“I don’t need your help. I’ve never needed anyone before, and I don’t now,” Charity grits out. Her words are sharp but she doesn’t look Vanessa in the eye, she doesn’t follow it up with a searing look, and Vanessa knows that means something.

 

She desperately hopes it means something.

 

“I know you’re hurt and angry and you’re pushing me away, but you don’t have to, Charity. You don’t have to. You don’t have to be alone or brave or anything, just let me help,” Vanessa tries, she almost pleads, but she can see that the softness of her tone only seems to aggravate Charity more.

 

She has her back to Vanessa but she turns to answer her, and for the first time since Vanessa set foot off the boat and onto the dock, she feels afraid for herself.

 

There’s a rage in Charity that Vanessa’s almost certain is pain and anger at her brother, but it colours Charity’s skin with an inhuman glow, it darkens the green of her eyes to a red when she turns towards her. It crackles dangerously between them, and Vanessa wonders for the first time how strong Charity’s self-control is, and how clear her rational mind can be during a storm like this.

 

“There is nothing deeper to me, _Vanessa_ ,” Charity snaps, and every word makes Charity seem more terrible, makes her pain throb like an aura around her, takes her closer to god and further from human. “ _Nothing_ . This is _all_ I am. Anger and rage and hate and pain and cruelty. You were a fool to think I could ever have been _anything_ more. Now leave me alone.”

 

She stares Vanessa down with eyes like coals, and Vanessa’s entire body wants to cower, it wants to retreat into flight, but she tells it to stay put while Charity yells.

 

“I won’t leave you,” Vanessa says, defiant, her throat thickening with panic as she tries to step closer to Charity, even as Charity seems to move further and further away.

 

“Go, Vanessa,” Charity tells her again, and Vanessa shakes her head as Charity growls in exasperation, her temper visibly shortening dangerously thin.

 

“No,” Vanessa says, raising her chin, the muscles in her shoulders tensing in anticipation, but she can feel the air change around them, she can see the look in Charity’s eye.

 

She can feel that patience snap.

 

“I won’t ask again,” Charity growls as she steps down into the pool finally, the blood around her turning immediately red, far too red.

 

“Charity,” Vanessa begs one last time as tears roll down her cheeks, because the colour of the water is making her panic, because no one, even a god can lose so much blood.

 

Charity’s break is quick and clean and she speaks with a voice that Vanessa barely recognises, her whole body shaking with barely controlled anger, her silhouette terrible as she stands in the pool and the water discolours more and more with each passing second.

 

“I said _go_ ,” Charity bellows back at her, and despite her best effort, despite holding on so hard to her strength, Vanessa winces, and it’s her undoing.

 

She watches a myriad of expressions cross Charity’s face then. Betrayal. Anger. Despair. And it’s all her fault. All her fault that she couldn’t stand her ground.

 

“I knew it,” Charity sneers, turning her back on Vanessa as she lowers herself into the water with a hiss, as the water laps around the wound in her stomach. “You’re just like everyone else.”

 

Charity makes a sound that might a cynical bark or a sob when she fully submerges her stomach but Vanessa doesn’t hear it properly because before she can do anything, before she can rush and apologise or fall to her knees and beg Charity to let her stay, Charity raises a hand, covered in her own blood, snapping her fingers, and Vanessa is gone.

  


-

  


Vanessa opens her eyes to her bedchamber, hers, not theirs, and she’s about to scream until her lungs are hoarse and Charity lets her out of her room, but when her hand falls on the handle it opens freely.

 

She’s not locked in. She’s still not a prisoner.

 

She runs across the hall as quickly as she can, unsurprised to find one of the hounds asleep outside her door, and she tries Charity’s door but that’s locked. For the first time since she arrived, it’s locked.

 

Vanessa presses her ear up to the door in the vague hope that she might be able to hear Charity inside but all she can hear is silence, whether that’s because of some kind of magic or because she’s not there Vanessa isn’t sure, but she can’t hear a thing.

 

_The springs_ , she thinks suddenly, _Charity will still be there_.

 

Without giving it more than a second’s thought, Vanessa picks up the hem of her dress from the floor - she’d worn one of the long formal ones Charity has been so fond of in anticipation of her return - and she starts running.

 

She can hear the click of the Doberman’s claws on the marble floor, the dog following her as she races down the stairs, through the cavernous hallways of the palace, until she reaches the bend deep inside that turns onto the path which takes her further into the side of the mountain and down into the springs. Vanessa’s breathless as she runs, scared for Charity and scared for their bond and scared for the possibility of the thing she might have destroyed by showing a tiny hint of fear. She’s so distracted that she doesn’t see the shimmer hanging in mid-air, she doesn’t see the curtain forming a barrier between her passage and the springs until she runs straight into it.

 

The effect of touching it is instantaneous and Vanessa is thrown violently back into the air in a high arc, coming down hard on the marble, gasping as she tries to recover from the theft of her breath, winded by the force of the blow and the landing. She’s too disoriented to think clearly for a moment, shaking her head to throw off the haze caused by her pain before she can make sense of what happened.

 

She stands when she can, ignoring the slowly seeping cut she can feel across her elbow from the landing, walking up to the line that she can see now. She raises her palms to it carefully, feeling it crackle with malignant energy, hesitantly putting one hand forward to touch it, cursing when it burns and pushes her hand back. She looks up and around, noting that the barrier covers the whole entrance into the springs, and while she’s sure there are a dozen other ways to get into the spring, she hasn’t a clue where to find them.

 

The blockade is too far back for her to actually see into the spring but she knows that whether Charity is in there or not, she’ll hear her yelling regardless.

 

“ _Charity_ ,” Vanessa cries at the top of her lungs, ignoring the burn of the barrier when she presses urgently against it. “Charity I know you can hear me, please. _Please_.”

 

She doesn’t get a response though, nothing, there’s no sound at all save the whining of the hound at her heels and the pain in her own breath as she continues to push against the barrier.

 

“Charity, I’m not going anywhere,” Vanessa yells again, gritting her teeth. She sets her stance and pushes as hard as she can with her whole body, leaning in with her shoulder, gasping at the pain. “I’m not like everyone else. You know I’m not like everyone else. You know me, please.”

 

She gets nothing back. Only silence.

 

She stops pushing for a moment, falling back with a harsh breath as the pain radiates through her whole body, and she’s not sure what hurts more: whether it’s the fall, the barrier, or the fact that Charity might never let her in again.

 

Vanessa knows it’s fruitless, being here, trying to see her, because if she knows one thing about Charity it’s that she won’t be found unless she wants to see Vanessa. Until she’s ready to see her. If she ever will be.

 

She wants to get a message across regardless, because she knows that Charity will know where she is, whether Vanessa can see her or not, and she wants Charity to know that she’s here, trying, that she’s not cowering in her bedchamber, afraid. She needs Charity to know that she wants to be by her side, irrespective of what happened tonight. Irrespective of whatever happens actually, Vanessa thinks with a jolt. It doesn’t matter what she does for the rest of their lives, because she thinks knows who Charity is now, who she really is, and she wants that, she wants her. All of her.

 

She takes a steadying breath, clenching her teeth before she pushes forward against the barrier again, her breath catching with the agony it causes. She uses the pain as a tool to make her push harder though, because she knows what this is, it’s a literal representation of Charity’s barriers, of her holding Vanessa out, and she has to show Charity that she wants to be on the other side of it, not away from her.

 

It’s no use though, Charity’s far too angry to let the strength of the barrier waver for even a second, and after what feels like hours of trying Vanessa collapses into an exhausted heap on the warm marble floor.

 

She can feel the sleeve of her arm wet with her own blood and she knows that she should get up, that she should go back to her room and tidy herself up, wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks, but she can’t bear the idea of leaving Charity here alone, even if she doesn’t want to see her.

 

It’s easy to close her eyes as she curls into a ball on the ground against the clean smooth stone, it’s easy to feel sleep pulling at her messily, it’s easy to give in, as she feels the massive dog curl up at her side, keeping her warm.

 

She’ll try again tomorrow, Vanessa thinks, biting back tears. She’ll get Charity to see.

 

Because she has to, doesn’t she?

 

She _has_ to.

  


-

  


Days pass and she doesn’t see Charity once.

 

The palace remains as open to her as it always has, the banquet room remains as heavily piled with food as it was on the day she arrived, but Vanessa can barely stomach anything, as sick with worry as she is.

 

The hound at her side drags her there once a day, it’s teeth ripping a hole in her gown as it pulls her insistently, and Charity wonders whether that’s the hound's own agency, it’s concern, or whether it’s carrying out Charity’s orders to keep her from fading away. She eats a few mouthfuls under the animal’s watchful eye, throwing the dog a scowl as it curls up on her feet when she takes a seat at the table, managing enough to stop her becoming weak, but everything tastes hollow on her tongue. Nothing feels right anymore.

 

The biggest problem though, the thing weighing Vanessa down the most, the worry plaguing every single one of her breaths, is that she can’t feel Charity’s presence here anymore. She doesn’t know whether that’s simply Charity obscuring it, wanting to hide from Vanessa while she works through her rage, while she heals and licks her wounds, or whether she’s just gone. She’s not sure what’s worse. Charity hiding from her, or not telling her that she’s left their world for who knows how long.

 

_Their world_ , Vanessa thinks with a shock. Because this doesn’t just feel like Charity’s world anymore, it feels like hers too.

 

She can feel herself changing with each day that passes, subtly, in ways that she might miss if she didn’t have every inch of her mind on guard for any sign of difference, in her body and outside of it, in case it should herald Charity’s return.

 

The variations are subtle but they’re there: her veins darken beneath her skin, her pallor changes ever so slightly, the blue of her eyes is lined by a thin ring of red, and she thinks that the gradual continuing shift must have some significance, because surely that wouldn’t continue if Charity had already broken the bond between them.

 

It’s that she holds onto when she falls asleep after running through her nightly routine of trying Charity’s bedroom door, still locked shut, the fact that her body keeps changing, making her a better pair for Charity, stripping the mundane parts of her humanity and replacing them with something that deserves to stand at Charity’s side.

 

If she ever returns.

 

The barrier by the springs is long gone, Vanessa goes there each night before bed too, to bathe, to look for Charity, but there’s never anything there but the soft yellow glow of the pools, and silence. Always silence. It’s lonely, even with the hound constantly at her side, and Vanessa wonders often how Charity hasn’t gone mad with it before, the lack of human presence. The lack of company. The warmth of the palace remains, but it’s tempered, even the lights on the walls burn duller without her.

 

One small thing that interests her, in spite of the fact that she’s almost desperately lonely, is that she doesn’t miss her world one tiny bit.

 

She wonders whether Charity would ever believe her if she told her that. She wonders whether she’ll ever have the opportunity to.

 

The worry is constant but it increases exponentially after what Vanessa thinks is a few weeks, and it’s always worst at night. She struggles to sleep with Charity gone, nightmares filling her head every time she closes her eyes. Of Charity somewhere, hurt, still wounded, in pain. Of Charity somewhere else, with someone else.

 

She wakes with a gasp one night, drawn sharply out of a nightmare where Charity comes home, but she isn’t alone. She has a new bride by her side. A better one. One who doesn’t flinch away from her, not even once. She slides her hands into the woman’s hair in front of Vanessa, kissing her hard before pulling her into her bedchamber - their bedchamber - well, what _was_ anyway. Before.

 

Vanessa presses her palm to her chest in an attempt to quiet her heart, pounding furiously beneath her ribs, angry at herself for being so upset over a nightmare and wiping harshly at a stray tear on her cheek. She contemplates letting sleep overtake her but she’s afraid of what she’ll see if she does, so she rubs at her eyes instead. Maybe she’ll take a walk around the palace, drive herself to exhaustion before she falls back into her furs.

 

She’s about to throw herself from the warmth when she hears something move across the room, instantly paralysed with fear because the dog is on the bed with her, she can feel her down by her feet, which means that someone is-

 

“You’re not eating,” Charity says sharply, leaning against the door, her back rigid and her eyes black. She looks furious, but Vanessa doesn’t think she’s ever seen a more beautiful sight. “Why are you not eating?”

 

“It’s hard to have an appetite when the person you’re wed to just disappears without a trace, half-dead,” Vanessa returns with an equal fierceness, barely managing to suppress the urge to run straight to Charity, dangerous look on her face or not.

 

“I wasn’t half dead,” Charity says rolling her eyes impatiently. “I’m immortal, remember, Vanessa. Is this ignorance or are you simply stupid?”

 

“Is it healed?” Vanessa asks, throwing the covers off finally when Charity doesn’t look set to offer her any small amount of kindness or familiarity. She marches over to Charity, in a gown of deep burgundy, and Vanessa catches the way her hand moves to cover her stomach defensively before she stops herself.

 

“Of course it is,” Charity replies, straightening her back, curling her hands into fists at her side.

 

Vanessa doesn’t believe it for a second though, heading straight for Charity, reaching for her stomach as soon as she’s close enough. She’d never actually go as far as to hurt Charity, of course she wouldn’t, but Charity proves her point when her hand moves out and catches Vanessa’s before it can make contact, her fingers hard around Vanessa’s wrist.

 

“You’re lying,” Vanessa growls, stopping short, crossing her arms over her middle when she pulls her hand from Charity’s grip.

 

It’s an immensely difficult thing to do, because she wants to sag into it instead of tearing herself away from it, but she doesn’t want the return of Charity’s touch against her skin to be harsh like that.

 

“Why do you care?” Charity throws back at her carelessly and Vanessa feels herself weaken under the insinuation, as though it were a physical blow.

 

“Why do I care?” Vanessa asks, horrified, because she knows Charity isn’t just saying it to be cruel. She truly thinks Vanessa might not. “Charity, I’m your wife. Of course I care. I’ve been worried sick every second since you bloody disappeared.”

 

“You say that like a marriage is a guarantee of something,” Charity replies with an exasperated sigh. “Haven’t I already told you that I know it’s not, Vanessa. Those desperate fools above ground prove that every day when they betray each other.”

 

“Is that what you think I did? Betrayed you?” Vanessa asks quietly, even though she already knows the answer. It’s clear in Charity’s lingering anger, in the pained curve of her shoulders.

 

“I’m not here to have a discussion,” Charity says sternly, changing the subject without discussion. “You have to go above ground. It’s time.”

 

“I don’t want to,” Vanessa replies, feeling the panic start to climb her back, vertebrae by vertebrae, its claws pinching the skin, because what if Charity sends her there and she can’t ever come back. “I’m not going. I want to stay here with you.”

 

“I don’t care if you want to or not, love,” Charity laughs incredulously at Vanessa’s objection. “You have to. It was the deal. It’s been three moons since you came here, you have to go above ground.”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Vanessa growls quickly when Charity raises her hands to click her fingers, presumably to send Vanessa back whether she wants to go or not. “Charity, don’t you dare send me away.”

 

“Why do you want to stay here, Vanessa?” Charity asks, and for a second she looks completely exhausted, beyond tired. “For me? We’ve hardly seen each other for a month. Or is that why? You like it down here without me.”

 

“Stop it,” Vanessa says tensely, suppressing the urge to stomp her foot like a child, because Charity’s attitude is infuriating. “Why are you acting like this? You know how I feel about you.”

 

“You fear me,” Charity states plainly. It’s a challenge, the way she says it. Like she’s daring Vanessa to disagree.

 

“I love you,” Vanessa replies simply, dropping her hands to her sides as the fight goes out of her.

 

She hadn’t meant to say it, not like this anyway, but it doesn’t mean there’s any less truth to it than if she had whispered it to Charity between the furs of their bed.

 

It feels more fitting like this, when she thinks about it later. More true to them. Because every part of their marriage has been balanced with a tension of some kind, their love, and its first declaration shouldn’t be any different.

 

It catches Charity by surprise though, Vanessa can see that plainly. She stops in her tracks, her eyes moving through a fast range of emotion, doubt, disbelief, confusion, before she settles on denial. Vanessa is beginning to know that one well.

 

“You don’t,” Charity says dismissively, shaking her head and taking a step away from Vanessa as though she needs the distance to stop herself from doing something Vanessa suspects she’s battling the urge to suppress.

 

“I do,” Vanessa returns and her voice isn’t soft like it had been before Charity had broken down in the springs. It’s hard. Confident. Certain. Because she is. “You know I do. You can feel it can’t you?”

 

“I don’t feel anything, Vanessa,” Charity breathes, just the right side of shaken for Vanessa to know that she’s right. Charity can feel it. Charity knows.

 

“Yes, you do,” Vanessa asserts firmly and she takes a step towards Charity because she can do this, she knows Charity will see if she just shows her. She knows she’ll see.

 

“I don’t,” Charity replies, a conviction in her voice that Vanessa can hear now like she’s trying to convince herself otherwise. That she doesn’t care. That she doesn’t love Vanessa in return. That she can’t see.

 

“I dare you,” Vanessa says as Charity walks away from her, feeling a crackle of heat come off Charity in a wave when she does. She doesn’t have long, Charity is about to run, she can feel that too. “Please, Charity, I dare you to see. To listen to me. To listen to what your heart is telling you.”

 

She knows it’s the wrong thing to say, even without the derisive laugh that comes from Charity’s mouth next second.

 

Because she’s felt Charity’s heartbeat next to her ear before, but it’s always sounded different to her own. Different. Broken, maybe. Damaged. Like it wears all the scars that sit on the outside of her skin too. It was the wrong thing to say, Vanessa knows that now.

 

“My heart?” Charity turns around with a sneer to face her, and Vanessa knows that she’s lost this chance. Charity won’t listen to her now, she won’t be reasoned with no matter what Vanessa says. “You don’t know the first thing about my heart, love. And you never will.”

 

“Charity, wait, please,” Vanessa says desperately but Charity is already walking away from her, pulling away from her. She’s already gone.

 

Vanessa knows exactly what’s about to happen next, she can feel it in the way Charity closes herself off, in the way she draws the warmth from the room as if trying to strengthen her resolve.

 

“Go home, Vanessa,” Charity throws over her shoulder. She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t look at Vanessa, she doesn’t do anything but break Vanessa’s heart. “Go back to your people. You don’t belong here.”

 

“Charity, _no_ ,” Vanessa sobs, lurching forward, reaching for Charity, but it’s far too late, and she’s far too far away.

 

The smoke around her fills her lungs and muddles her mind, but even still, Vanessa knows what’s happening, even though she summons every inch of strength in her body to stay rooted to the spot here. She can hear herself screaming Charity’s name as the marble disappears from beneath her feet, as the last of the palace’s warmth drains from her limbs, as the soft, cold feeling of dewy grass replaces the smooth familiar heat.

 

She doesn’t stop screaming it until the men arrive at the edges of the clearing she disappeared from, there to take her home.

  


_to be continued..._

 

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go...


	3. three.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa returns to a world that no longer feels like her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last part! 
> 
> I'm kind of planning on writing a little companion piece to this from Charity's POV. It's not even on paper yet but maybe look out for that eventually.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's read and enjoyed this little piece of madness, I appreciate it a lot.

- 

 

**Τέλος**

**Telos**

**(an end)**

 

-

 

_“Go home, Vanessa,” Charity throws over her shoulder. She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t look at Vanessa, she doesn’t do anything but break Vanessa’s heart. “Go back to your people. You don’t belong here.”_

_“Charity, no ,” Vanessa sobs, lurching forward, reaching for Charity, but it’s far too late, and she’s far too far away._

_The smoke around her fills her lungs and muddles her mind, but even still, Vanessa knows what’s happening, even though she summons every inch of strength in her body to stay rooted to the spot here._

_She can hear herself screaming Charity’s name as the marble disappears from beneath her feet, as the last of the palace’s warmth drains from her limbs, as the soft, cold feeling of dewy grass replaces the smooth familiar heat._

_She doesn’t stop screaming it until the men arrive at the edges of the clearing she disappeared from, there to take her home._

 

-

 

She’s still different. That’s the only consolation to this terrible nightmare.

 

Vanessa’s still different. Not a human and not a god, but still different. _So_ different now that she has others to compare herself with.

 

And she’s still wearing Charity’s ring.

 

A trunk of her things - well, Charity’s things procured for her - had come with her supposedly, already waiting for her by the time she reaches the palace she calls home. Or used to.

 

The physical differences are vastly noticeable even as they make their way back to the palace. She can see almost perfectly in the dark as the others, trained soldiers, occasionally stumble over rocks. She can see a distinct difference in the tone of her skin, even compared to theirs under the flame of the torchlight, hers redder, more alive, as if the blood in her veins strained to prove itself against theirs.

 

She feels strong here too, much stronger than she felt below the ground. She wonders if maybe it’s the same, her strength here and there, that she’s simply used to Charity’s power to compare her own with. She does feel strong though, like she could fight all five of the men escorting her and win without losing her breath.

 

It makes her think of Charity as she walks the stone path to her father's palace, it makes her think of each of the ways she pushed Vanessa to her limits. It makes her wonder whether anything in this world will ever challenge her if she can’t ever return to her home.

 

She wonders whether anything in this world will ever satisfy her again, too.  

 

“I don’t want to hear it,” Vanessa says to her father when she walks straight past him, standing nervously, hands clasped in front of him as he waits on the entrance steps to his palace.

 

She can hear him muttering apologies, the lies in them so clear to her now, so much clearer than she’s heard them before, and she wonders whether that’s Charity’s power too. She shuts the solid wooden door to her room in his face, leaning against it and sighing heavily, closing her eyes for the first time since she had appeared in the clearing.

 

Vanessa’s throat thickens as soon as she does and the grief comes rushing over her like a wave. _This can’t be it,_ she thinks to herself _. It can’t be. It can’t be._

 

The logical part of her mind steps through the facts in an attempt to keep her as calm as possible: she isn’t human, she’s still wearing her ring and it’s still glowing like whatever is between she and Charity is still alive, like it hasn’t perished yet.

 

She casts her eye around her bedchamber as she regulates her breathing. It’s a fine place, she knows that it is, but nothing about it feels real anymore. The white marble that lines the walls, the inviting looking bed in the middle of the room, it’s light and bright, too bright, and none of it, _none_ of it is what she wants.

 

“Charity, if you can hear me, I want you to bring me home immediately,” Vanessa says sharply as she begins to walk around the room, trying to ignore the tears rolling down her cheeks.

 

There’s no reply though. Nothing. Only silence and the fading echo of Charity’s presence next to her.

 

Vanessa paces until her feet hurt, until she can’t stand anymore, until the sun rises and the light almost blinds her. Only then does she lay her head down to sleep.

 

-

 

Misery doesn’t even begin to cover the months that follow.

 

Everything here is tasteless: the sun, the food, the people. It’s cold, it’s far too cold, and all Vanessa craves for days and days and days is warmth.

 

She sees Charity everywhere. In the corners of her bedchamber when she wakes up in the morning, in the distance through the trees when she’s in the forest, in a crowd down by the markets, standing still wearing pure black in the moving throngs of people, and every time Vanessa’s heart stops like it did the very first time that she ever saw her.

 

Part of her is certain that it’s actually Charity, because it seems so in character for her to look for Vanessa like this, to send her away only to seek her out the second she does so.

 

She hopes that it is Charity, not only for the sake of her sanity, but because she hopes that Charity can see how miserable she is, how deeply unhappy it makes her to be here, how the light is too bright and the platitudes too false and that all she wants is the darkness and warmth of Charity’s palace.

 

Of Charity herself.

 

“She’ll come for you soon,” Frank says to her after two months pass. They’ve barely spoken a word to each other since her return, despite his numerous apologies. “She’ll come for you when you’re ready to leave.”

 

“I’ve been ready since the second I arrived here and she hasn’t come,” Vanessa growls under her breath, not bothering to look at her father.

 

She’s been counting the days, marking them into the wooden post of her bed with a small knife every night before she goes to sleep. She’s tried desperately to keep her anticipation to a minimum, careful not to let the hope grow too strong in the event that Charity doesn’t ever return for her, but the heat in her ring has been growing stronger in the last few days, as though Charity was yearning for her like Vanessa has been in return.

 

Sleep comes for her early one night and she wakes well before dawn, while the moon is still high in the sky, and she knows that something is different the second she opens her eyes.

 

Charity is sitting in the armchair in the corner of her room, her legs crossed and her arms sitting proud on the sides like the first time Vanessa had entered the throne room.

 

“Do you want to come home, Vanessa?” Charity asks her simply. Vanessa can see her perfectly, even in the dark. Every line, every muscle, every inch of the body that Vanessa has missed more than she’s ever missed a single thing her entire life.

 

“Yes,” Vanessa replies clearly, sitting up in bed, suppressing the urge to cross the room and throw herself into Charity’s arms. “I want to go home.”

 

She can feel the warmth return the second the smoke begins to swirl around them, filling her lungs, seeping out to the tips of her fingers. The black marble fills her vision when she opens her eyes again and for the first time in what feels like weeks, she can _breathe_.

 

They’re in Vanessa’s bedchamber, not Charity’s, but Charity is here, she’s with Vanessa and not locked away in her own room or gone again and that means something, Vanessa knows it does.

 

Vanessa has spent the last few months planning the speech she was going to give to Charity on her return if she ever came back for her, but it all falls from her mind completely the second she sees Charity across the room. She knows she probably only has one more shot at this though, she knows Charity won’t stand another slip of the tongue.

 

She knows that she can’t show her weakness either, she knows that she needs to show Charity her strength, she needs to show Charity how much of a match she truly is. She takes a deep breath, tensing her stomach before orienting her fate, throwing Charity - standing across the other side of the room - a look, determined and as strong as the palace around them, before she starts walking.  

 

Vanessa stops just short of touching Charity, she’s breathing hard but they’re far enough apart that they don’t quite make contact. They’re close enough that she can smell the scent of Charity that her lungs have ached without though, and all Vanessa wants to do is close her eyes and melt into the immensely tempting heat of Charity’s body, but she knows that she needs to speak first.

 

“Don’t you _ever_ send me away like that again, do you hear me?” Vanessa growls, her voice low and dangerous, and Charity, for all her godly power and grace, only raises an eyebrow simply in reply.

 

The urge to prod Charity in the chest when she speaks every word is overwhelming, but Vanessa just lets her chest swell with an exhale instead.

 

“Anything else?” Charity asks simply, and Vanessa almost wants to fly into a rage, because she wants a reaction, she wants Charity to acknowledge that what she did was wrong, she wants Charity to admit how much she missed her.

 

She wants to stay angry but it’s so hard when Charity is so close and Vanessa’s will is so broken, and all she wants to do is cry in relief that she’s back here, that Charity came for her. The anger in her fight goes from her in a rush, and all she’s left with is the truth, of the bitter sadness she’s been left with for weeks on end.

 

“If you ever do something like that again,” Vanessa tries to get out before her throat thickens and the tears prick at her eyes. “I’ll-“

 

“You’ll what, Vanessa?” Charity interrupts, her fingers fluttering against the fabric of Vanessa’s nightgown at her sides.

 

“Don’t you dare,” Vanessa says fiercely, the flame lighting again, hot like an oil fire at Charity’s smugness. “Don’t you _dare_. Don’t you act like this has been easy. Don’t you dare dismiss the fact that I’ve been miserable for weeks, that you sent me away without my will or agreement, don’t you dare-“

 

“I love you,” Charity sighs easily, and Vanessa’s heart stops. Just like that, everything stops.

 

“You what?” Vanessa asks, almost speechless, a numbness creeping in around the back of her neck, moving down her spine.

 

“I love you,” Charity says again, as goosebumps break out over Vanessa’s arms, following the line of numbness down her back too.

 

“You love me?” Vanessa questions like she can’t believe this is happening, like she can’t believe she’s hearing the words come out of Charity’s mouth. Like she’s worried that this is all still a dream and she’s still in her father’s palace.

 

“Do you mean what you said before you left?” Charity asks her, her hands hovering over Vanessa’s sides like she’s holding back from touching Vanessa until she knows for certain where Vanessa stands. “Did you mean what you said before I-“

 

“I love you too,” Vanessa says clearly, easily, the words lifting a heavy burden off her shoulders.

 

Charity kisses her before Vanessa can find Charity’s body with her hands, and the relief that the touch of her lips brings is almost enough to bring her to her knees.

 

She feels Charity’s hands slide around her waist just in time, catching her before she can falter, holding Vanessa hard against her but soft at the same time as her tongue slides hot and wet and welcome against her own. Vanessa’s arms snake around Charity’s shoulders, refusing to let anything exist between the two of them, the feeling of Charity’s breasts against hers through the thin fabric of her nightgown enough to make her moan.

 

“I won’t spend three months without you again,” Vanessa growls, almost panting like an animal when they part, Charity’s lips already swollen when she looks down to them.

 

It’s an extreme test of her self-control to keep her concentration from drifting when Charity’s hand not spread possessively over her hip makes its way up her thigh, bringing the bottom of her nightgown with it, but she needs to say this now.  

 

“I know that was your bargain, but I won’t do it again,” Vanessa says firmly, shaking her head before leaning her forehead against Charity’s. “Unless you’d prefer the solitude, that is.”

 

Charity looks down at Vanessa’s lips and then back to her eyes like they have all the time in the world to do this, smiling wickedly, and Vanessa feels completely naked like Charity has dissolved their clothes into ash and they’re touching skin to skin.

 

“Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?” Charity says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and not something that makes Vanessa’s heart pound in her chest.

 

“No,” Vanessa replies with a smirk, moving one of her hands down to rest against Charity’s lower back, holding her close. “I don’t. Perhaps you should tell me.”

 

Charity levels her with a glare as if to say that she knows exactly what Vanessa is doing, drawing a confession out of her. But it’s playful, it’s different to the way she looked at Vanessa in the hot springs, and Vanessa can’t believe how far away that feels, like it was eons ago, in another life, not this one. Charity huffs in a way that makes Vanessa want to kiss her before she gives up what Vanessa wants.

 

“I’ve endured here for centuries and the silence was tolerable, desired even,” Charity admits, her voice like a song, music to Vanessa’s ears. “And then you come along and spoil everything. Instead of enjoying the lack of noise, I strain to hear your heartbeat when I sleep, like some sentimental fool.”

 

Charity rolls her eyes when she pauses, and Vanessa can’t resist kissing her, her hand curving around the back of Charity’s neck, the skin hot beneath her palm in a way that nothing has been for days and days and days.

 

“You took the heat with you when you went, love. I hated every second of it, and I hated myself for hating it,” Charity confesses, a throb of heat moving through her body where it touches Vanessa’s when she speaks. “You ask me if I missed you? Yes, Vanessa. I did. I did. So much so that there’s no way I can allow you to go for as long again.”

 

“Good,” Vanessa says simply, feeling Charity bristle beneath her before she pulls her closer still.

 

“Good?” Charity growls, as though the word is dirty. “I give you an admission like that, and your reply to me is _good_?”

 

“Should I remind you that I didn’t want to go in the first place?” Vanessa returns, kissing Charity’s cheek when she turns her head away, scoffing. She continues with a smile on her face, because she knows that Charity knows she has a point. “Should I remind you that I was miserable every single day I was away from you? That I didn’t know it possible to miss someone the way I missed you? That I _craved_ you?”

 

“You’re right,” Charity nods with a serious look on her face. “Perhaps it’s better if we don’t talk at all, hmmm? Unless you want to tell me about those cravings.”

 

“I want to tell you everything,” Vanessa says openly, watching as Charity takes a breath, as she understands how truly, how deeply Vanessa means that.

 

“Everything?” Charity hums against her lips when she leans in, when she begins walking Vanessa backwards towards the bed. “That’s rather a lot of ground to cover, love, when there are things I need to be doing. How about you start by telling me that you love me again? And finish with the things you dreamed of while you were away.”

 

“What else do you need to be doing, then?” Vanessa asks, pulling back to look at Charity with a frown, bemused that there could possibly be something more important than this.

 

“Well,” Charity says with a dramatic huff, wrapping Vanessa’s legs around her waist in an instant, her hands under Vanessa’s backside, holding her at a level where Vanessa can look straight into her eyes.

 

She doesn’t say anything else yet, walking Vanessa over to the bed, turning so she can sit on the end of it, with Vanessa straddling her lap. Charity kisses Vanessa softly, slowly, until Vanessa can feel her hands shake where they’re spread across Charity’s shoulders. There’s a pause before Charity looks at her with a smile on her face, perfectly innocent, while her hand moves up the outside of Vanessa’s thighs and disappears between them.

 

“I would say that this is more important, Vanessa,” Charity breathes, her fingers dipping uninterrupted against Vanessa’s aching core, tasting just how much Vanessa has missed her. “Wouldn’t you?”

 

She moves her fingers against Vanessa heavily for a few strokes and then her hand disappears, but Charity kisses her before she can whine at their loss. Her tongue moves against Vanessa’s hungrily as her hands move up the outside of Vanessa’s thighs, pushing her nightgown up with palms flat on her skin, over her hips, past her ribs, until Vanessa has to raise her arms above her head obligingly to allow Charity to pull the garment off her completely.

 

Vanessa watches as Charity allows herself the moment to indulge in the newly liberated skin in front of her, closing her lips around the skin of one of Vanessa’s breasts, growling when her tongue moves over Vanessa’s nipple roughly.

 

“Yours too,” Vanessa gasps when Charity’s lips leave her chest, and her hands settle on the bare skin of her thighs again. “Get rid of the dress, please.”

 

“As you wish, my Queen,” Charity husks, raising her hand and clicking her fingers with a mildly impressed expression on her face.

 

Vanessa feels her whole body sigh with the feeling of Charity bare beneath her thighs, under her hands, here and breathing and real. _Home_ , Vanessa thinks happily, ignoring the sentimentality. _It feels like home_.

 

“I missed you too, Vanessa,” Charity says in reply to Vanessa’s non-verbal admission, sliding her arms around the small of Vanessa’s back, pulling her close so that she can rest her cheek over Vanessa’s heart.

 

Vanessa's hands move over Charity’s back in wide circles, drinking in the way Charity’s chest stretches with her breath, at the way the skin dips beneath her touch, the scars perfectly uneven. Some of them are warmer than others, the scars, and Vanessa knows that this means they’re more recent, that they can’t be overly long healed, and she pulls back with a frown.

 

“You’ve been fighting?” Vanessa asks crossly. She knows that the last thing Charity needs is pandering, so she gives her mild annoyance instead.

 

“I needed the distraction, didn’t I?” Charity returns, shrugging casually, but Vanessa can hear the ache in her voice, the sadness, now that she knows what to listen for. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you. About coming to get you whether you wanted it or not. Been picking fights for weeks because I couldn’t help myself, like some uncontrolled man.”

 

“Did I really see you?” Vanessa dares to ask on the back of Charity’s ready explanation, resting her chin on Charity’s shoulder, kissing the curve of skin presented to her. “In the other world, did I really see you or was I imagining things? Seeing what I wanted to see?”

 

“I needed to make sure you were safe,” Charity says dismissively, as if trying not to draw any attention to the fact that she hadn’t been able to stay away.

 

“You were worried about me?” Vanessa asks, a trickle of fear running down her back. “Was there-“

 

“You weren’t in any danger,” Charity replies with a surprisingly soothing voice. “I’m always worried for you the second you’re out of my sight, even though I know no one can kill you.”

 

Vanessa looks at her, confused, and Charity answers her questioning frown with one of her own. “Just because no one can kill you doesn’t mean no one can hurt you. I wanted to make sure your father was treating you well.”

 

“It wasn’t to keep your brother away, was it?” Vanessa asks carefully, watching Charity’s eyes darken at his mention.

 

“No, love,” Charity answers her, her hand cupping the nape of Vanessa’s neck as she looks directly into Vanessa’s eyes. “He knows better than to come for you.”

 

“How do you know?” Vanessa asks, and she knows without a doubt that she’s safe here, but she doesn’t know how Charity can be so sure.

 

“You’re worrying again,” Charity says with a sigh, smoothing both of her hands down Vanessa’s back. “I know because the state that I came back in that night? It looked like a scratch beside what I left my brother with. I couldn’t… I just couldn’t abide any of his threats, not when they were about you. So I made a few of my own. And reminded him once and for all which of us is the stronger. I took the spear so that I could… he’s still healing, love, even this long since the fight. Let’s leave it at that.”

 

“You fought. For me?” Vanessa questions, running her fingers over the line of Charity’s jaw, her stomach swooping in the light of Charity’s revelation.

 

“I’d die for you, Vanessa,” Charity says simply as her hands curl against Vanessa’s back, her nails dragging across the soft flesh. “Don’t you know that yet?”

 

The touch against her skin is harsh but Vanessa leans into it, she _wants_ it, she wants to feel Charity mark her as much as she knows Charity wants to do it.

 

“Would you really?” Vanessa asks when her eyes flutter open and she arches her back, pushing her chest into Charity’s and her back into the bite of Charity’s nails.

 

“Yes, Vanessa,” Charity answering sweetly, indulging her, smiling with a warmth that radiates out at the way Vanessa bends for her. “I would.”

 

“Good,” Vanessa replies with a sigh. She takes one of Charity’s hands and slides it up her stomach to cup one of her breasts, her own hand covering Charity’s, squeezing tightly. “Because I’d die for you too.”

 

“Would you now?” Charity asks richly, her voice thick as she flexes her fingers and Vanessa squirms underneath her touch. “And what if I wanted you to live for me? Would you do that?”

 

She slides her fingers down Vanessa’s stomach again, between her thighs, and this time she doesn’t hesitate, pushing inside Vanessa smoothly, making her gasp, her hands clawing at Charity’s shoulders with the surprise.

 

“Too much, love?” Charity coos sweetly, leaning in, rubbing her cheek softly against Vanessa’s in a complete juxtaposition to the feeling between her thighs. “Should I stop?”

 

“Don’t you dare,” Vanessa growls, rocking her hips down onto Charity’s hand, hissing a little at the burn it brings, and the relief too.

 

She thinks Charity is going to say something, comment on her hunger, tease maybe, but she just kisses Vanessa deeply instead as one hand rests on the small of Vanessa’s back and the fingers of the other find a long, slow pace.

 

“There is nothing sweeter in your world or mine than feeling you around my fingers, Vanessa,” Charity breathes into her ear when she pulls away from the kiss. “Nothing richer. Nothing more mouth-watering.”

 

Vanessa groans at the admission, melting even further into Charity’s touch, resting her forehead on the curve of Charity’s neck while she pushes in and out of Vanessa with languorously slow movements, and Vanessa doesn’t know what’s more intense, a hard, quick pace, or this, that makes her feel like she’s coming apart at the seams.

 

Charity is whispering sweet sounds into the warmth of her neck too but she barely hears them, her whole world reduced to the way her hips bear down on Charity’s hand, how Charity retains some extraordinary self-control and keeps the pace painfully slow, refusing to allow Vanessa to hasten it.

 

“Charity, _please_ ,” she begs finally, her nails dragging down Charity’s back messily in a way that makes her hiss in reply. “Please, I need-“

 

“I know what you need, love,” Charity offers sweetly, adding a third finger, and Vanessa begins to feel her restraint crack. “I know exactly what you need.”

 

She curves her fingers on the fourth thrust and Vanessa comes suddenly, hard and deep, _so_ deep, the release an ache that burns like Charity’s fingers had until it dissipates across her body.

 

Vanessa hasn’t stopped shaking when Charity turns them both, shifting up a little higher on the bed, away from the edge, leaving Vanessa on her back with her cheeks flushed and her mind a blank hum. Vanessa pulls Charity to her when she settles herself between her thighs.

 

Her fingers spread wide in Charity’s hair and she tries to shake her head when Charity catches her hand before it can slip between her legs. “I want you,” Vanessa whines, because she’s hungry to feel Charity moan and sigh for her, she’s starving for it. “Charity-“

 

“When I’m done with you,” Charity replies wickedly, in a tone that allows no room for argument before she lowers herself to Vanessa’s skin, adorning every inch of her chest with her lips.

 

The attention is different this time, though. It’s gentle, and much, _much_ softer, Charity lingering with each kiss, her tongue warm against Vanessa’s skin.

 

“Don’t look so surprised, Vanessa,” Charity says wryly, looking up quickly after she’s kissed her way across Vanessa’s chest, up to the other side of her neck. “I can be soft, too.”

 

“I won’t tell a soul,” Vanessa sighs as Charity’s hands move over her stomach, as they wrap around her sides and Charity moves her attention down to her breasts.

 

She places kisses delicately, like she’s worried that Vanessa might break beneath her any second, and the gentleness in her touch steals Vanessa’s breath away. Not because she didn’t think Charity was capable of it somewhere deep down, but because she didn’t know if Charity _wanted_ to be.

 

It’s not exactly soft, the attention, but it’s careful, it’s considered, like she’s trying to prove her love through each caress, every press of her lips, each nip of her teeth.

 

“You’d better not,” Charity says in response to Vanessa’s earlier statement when she kisses down her stomach, lower, lower, lower. “I’d have to steal you away if you did. Never allow you to leave.”

 

“Maybe I will then,” Vanessa replies but it’s broken, rough, because Charity is settling herself between Vanessa’s thighs, biting the soft skin, making Vanessa jump into her hands. “So you’ll have to steal me away forever.”

 

“That does sounds like a rather attractive prospect,” Charity drawls, tilting her head as she looks up to Vanessa, her breath rushing hot over Vanessa’s core. “I don’t like sharing, you know, especially not with the humans who don’t realise what a treasure they have amongst them. I want you all to myself.”

 

She can feel herself tensing hard as her body searches for friction, and she knows that Charity can see the way her inner thighs quake with the need to be touched, she knows she would see the smirk clear on Charity’s face if she could open her eyes.

 

“You’re beautiful when you’re desperate, Vanessa,” Charity breathes against her before Vanessa feels the first touch of her tongue. “Absolutely breathtaking.”

 

The last word cuts off abruptly because Charity closes her mouth over Vanessa, groaning, the sound of it vibrating against her, and every thought that isn’t _Charity_ leaves her in an instant. Charity’s tongue swirls and she devours Vanessa readily, eagerly, in a way that leaves Vanessa gasping for air.

 

She can hear herself begging messily as Charity takes her apart, bit by bit, reassembling her only to break her down all over again. Her tongue moves firm, and then softer, dipping lower to taste Vanessa from the source as her hands wrap around Vanessa’s thighs, holding her apart, holding her down, her fingers leaving small indents in the skin.

 

Charity moves one of Vanessa’s legs over her shoulder when Vanessa’s cursing grows louder. She tears a hole in the sheets beneath her, a new strength rippling through her body when Charity slides her hand into the space between them, pushing into her as her tongue works Vanessa higher and higher and higher.

 

She comes sharply this time, the force of it hitting her like a swift blow, and the sound of her ecstasy echoes around the room, like a song off of the warm marble. Charity holds her high through her release, drawing her along until she feels Vanessa slacken beneath her.

 

“I don’t…” Vanessa starts but she doesn’t have the mental capacity to finish her own thought, trailing off and pulling Charity to her.

 

Charity for her part looks like the epitome of sin, crawling up Vanessa’s body like a cat, her shoulder blades high through her back as she moves on all fours up the bed before draping herself over Vanessa’s body.

 

“Lost for words, love?” Charity says smugly, but Vanessa can’t even reprimand her for it because the aftershocks of her orgasm pulse through her randomly like a lightning strike, and she can still feel the hum of Charity’s mouth between her thighs.

 

“Stop talking and kiss me,” Vanessa replies, watching Charity lick her lips before she moves hard against Vanessa’s mouth, the kiss bruising, claiming.

 

“Stop talking, should I?” Charity asks curiously as her index finger circles Vanessa’s belly button. “Not even to tell you that I love you, Vanessa? That I _adore_ you. That I’d never leave this bed again if I could.”

 

“I like your bed better,” Vanessa sighs, casting a look around the room before she pulls Charity on top of her again, smiling when Charity raises up above her, hands on either side of her head.

 

“That’s what you’re thinking about?” Charity asks dryly, glancing down to their bodies as if providing evidence that such a thing should be the last thing on Vanessa’s mind.

 

“No,” Vanessa replies smartly, and in a few quick movements has Charity on her back instead, running her hands over Charity’s stomach as she straddles her waist. “I’m thinking about the fact that you love me. That you _adore_ me.”

 

“What else are you thinking about?” Charity asks her with a suggestive lilt, before holding up the tattered remains of part of the sheet. “I’m impressed with this by the way.”

 

“I didn’t know I could do things like that,” Vanessa admits, glowing a soft pink in embarrassment. “I don’t think I could before. I’ve never-”

 

“It’s being close to me,” Charity explains with a smile on her face, running her hands over Vanessa’s thighs. “You’ll become stronger as your love for me grows. You get to share a part of my power when our bond strengthens.”

 

“It’s proof for you then?” Vanessa questions, the idea exciting to her, that Charity has in her hands how much Vanessa feels for her. “That my words are true? That the things I say to you are true?”

 

“That it is,” Charity replies smoothly. She tries to sit up but Vanessa beats her to it, pushing firmly on Charity’s shoulders so that she falls back down to the sheets.

 

Vanessa knows that Charity is stronger than her, a thousand times stronger, but she allows herself to be pushed back regardless, and her willingness, the lack of resistance, it makes Vanessa smile.

 

“You’ve had your fun,” Vanessa says as she hears a richness in her own voice, a happiness, a hint of pleasure. “It’s my turn now. You’re mine now.”

 

“Is that what that was?” Charity asks with a raised eyebrow, sliding her hand around the back of Vanessa’s neck, pulling Vanessa down to her lips. “Fun?”

 

“It’s _everything_ , Charity. You know it is,” Vanessa growls seriously, kissing Charity until she feels a hand move through her hair, squeezing hard when Charity bucks her hips up against Vanessa’s.

 

“You’re not going to make me wait long, are you?” Charity purrs against her lips when she breaks the kiss. “You wouldn’t do that after you’ve waited so long.”

 

“Are you afraid that I might?” Vanessa asks unable to help the smirk, because it truly feels like she has all the power in her hands for once. Like Charity really is nothing but a mortal beneath her, and she the god.

 

“I wasn’t afraid of anything before I met you,” Charity admits with a glaze in her eye. It’s simple, gorgeously simple, but the depth of it makes Vanessa pause in her inhale.

 

She doesn’t know if Charity’s saying as much, admitting as much, to herself or to Vanessa. “And now?” Vanessa asks slowly, as if speaking too quickly or too quietly will spook Charity away from the declaration.

 

“I feel like I’m afraid of a thousand things now,” Charity answers her with a scowl, her hands sliding down to Vanessa’s shoulders, her nails biting ever so slightly into the skin there. “And every single one of the cursed things pertains to you.”

 

“Tell me some of them?” Vanessa asks smoothly. She runs her hand, palm down, along the flat of Charity’s chest. “Perhaps I can alleviate a few.”

 

“What will I have then? If I give you all my fears like knives to hurt me with?” Charity questions, and she keeps her voice light but Vanessa can tell how real the worry is.

 

“I don’t want them to hurt you,” Vanessa replies softly, and she wishes that she could pour the reassurance into Charity but she only has her words, not magic. She only has her touch. “I want them to help you. I’ll give you some of my own if that would help?”

 

“Keep yours, love,” Charity returns, sighing beneath Vanessa, her whole chest moving with it. “I know I’ve hurt you enough. I don’t need to know any more.”

 

“You haven’t-“ Vanessa starts but Charity cuts her off, shaking her head.

 

“I have, Vanessa,” Charity states firmly, her eyes like stone as she places her own hands over Vanessa’s where they rest on her chest. “I know that I have. I can feel it like it’s a part of me, you see. I can feel it like an ache in my own chest.”

 

“I just… I didn’t want to go, for no other reason than because you weren’t there. Not because I crave the life down here away from everyone else. Because _you’re_ here,” Vanessa explains as her throat thickens and she tips her head back in an attempt to keep her tears in place.

 

“I know that now, don’t I,” Charity says ruefully. Vanessa laughs at the moodiness in her tone, at the cynical way she turns her head to the side.

 

“Tell me,” Vanessa pleads gently, raising Charity’s hand to her lips. She kisses each of her fingers before threading her own between them. “Please, tell me what you’re afraid of.”

 

“Alright,” Charity hisses, but she doesn’t sound annoyed, only resigned, even though the walls shake ever so slightly with her words. “Alright, Vanessa. Remember that you asked for this, will you, because so help me, this might kill us both.”

 

Charity glares at her, one last test, but Vanessa holds her eye. She squeezes Charity’s hand in hers tightly, until her bones creak. It’s an assurance, it’s reassurance, it’s just enough to remind Charity that she’s here, that she isn’t going anywhere, she’s staying, with all of their demons combined. Charity sighs again, and this time Vanessa feels the fight leave her with her exhaled breath.

 

“I’m afraid of you leaving,” Charity admits after a moment, averting her gaze from Vanessa’s after she begins.  “I’m afraid of you tiring of me. Of craving the sun. I’m afraid of you hating my true self, hating the monster I am. I’m afraid of you thinking there’s more good in me than there truly is. I’m afraid of you hating me.”

 

“Charity, I could-” Vanessa tries to begin, but Charity shakes her head again, cutting her off softly.

 

“Everyone hates me in the end, Vanessa, they always do, and I am _terrified_ that you will one day be the same,” Charity says, her voice quavering when she looks back to Vanessa, only for Vanessa to see tears in her eyes. She shakes her head, laughing harshly before she speaks again. “Do you see what you’ve made me? I haven’t cried in centuries, Vanessa. How can this make me anything but weak?”

 

“Because you’re not alone anymore. I’m not going anywhere. You think I’ll tire of you, that I could hate you? Look into my heart and tell me what it says. Because if you see betrayal in there, even a hint of it, then I will leave here forever before I risk hurting you,” Vanessa says, and the fierceness in her own voice would surprise her, if she didn’t know exactly how deep her affection for Charity was rooted. “I ate that fruit knowing who you were, what you do. I made my choice on that day, Charity, and I’ve not spared a second thinking about it since. Only about you. _Always_ about you. Look. See for yourself.”

 

Charity’s eyes close and she sighs as Vanessa places her hand over her heart, wondering whether Charity will notice how hard it’s beating, like it’s trying to prove its strength to Charity quite aside from Vanessa’s words.

 

“I don’t need to see, Vanessa,” Charity tells her when her eyes open slowly, drawing Vanessa back down to her. “I know. I already know.”

 

Charity leads the kiss this time, her arms sliding around Vanessa’s shoulders when her tongue moves against Vanessa’s. It’s deep, it makes the cadence of her heart slow, it makes everything around them disappear. Vanessa can feel Charity open with the kiss, she can feel any lingering resistance crumble like dust, she can feel each stone wall crumble away leaving nothing between them.

 

Vanessa pulls away, reluctant to break the moment, but she has something else on her mind that she needs to see through. She places lingering kisses on Charity’s cheeks, moving down to her neck but slowly, gradually, not rushing a single touch of her lips.

 

“What are you doing, love?” Charity asks curiously when Vanessa picks up her hand by the wrist, pressing a kiss to her palm, to each knuckle before changing hands and repeating the gesture.

 

“What’s the point of being a god if no one worships you?” Vanessa replies smoothly. She feels her heart leap when Charity laughs, deep and rough.

 

“Are you certain you’re real?” Charity asks as Vanessa finishes kissing the swell of her breasts, moving onto her stomach. “And not just a figment of my imagination?”

 

“Quite,” Vanessa answers with a smirk, scratching her nails roughly down the length of Charity’s sides, making her hiss. “I don’t think figments play dirty, do they?”

 

“Mine probably do,” Charity says ruefully, to which Vanessa replies by kissing the already healing scratches on Charity’s body, the red fading beneath her lips with a throb of heat.

 

“You know that I’m real,” Vanessa replies, using her teeth in the next kiss at Charity’s hip. “You can feel that I’m real, I know you can.”

 

“This worship,” Charity moans when Vanessa moves to her inner thigh. “I don’t suppose it has any additional benefits, does it?”

 

“I don’t remember you being this impatient last time,” Vanessa says, smiling against the skin of Charity’s thigh.

 

“What do you expect Vanessa?” Charity growls back, arching sharply against Vanessa’s mouth. “I haven’t had you touch me for months. You’re lucky I didn’t take you in the bedchamber of your father’s house as soon as you said yes.”

 

“Always next time, isn’t there,” Vanessa answers, raising her head to catch Charity’s eyes when she does so, immensely satisfied to find them rimmed with the red that denotes pure want.

 

“It would make me happy…” Charity begins hotly, and Vanessa can feel the anticipation of her next words settle in her belly before they slip down between her thighs, “… to make you scream where your father can hear us.”

 

“Of course it would,” Vanessa laughs as she begins to move her way back up Charity’s body. “I can’t deny that the idea has a little merit, myself.”

 

“Am I corrupting you?” Charity asks her when she moves up Charity’s stomach, insinuating herself between Charity’s thighs, pushing them apart with her hands on Charity’s knees. “Is this my influence, or were you simply bad all along?”

 

“I suppose we’ll never know,” Vanessa says innocently, leaning forward with her thigh, pushing against Charity’s core in a way that makes Charity groan loudly.

 

“Bad all along,” Charity growls, hooking her calf around Vanessa’s thighs, stopping her from moving away. “I think you were bad all along, Vanessa.”

 

“Perhaps we’re a better match than you thought?” Vanessa suggests with a smirk, taking the pressure of her leg away for a moment, waiting for Charity’s hiss of disapproval before she replaces it.

 

“I knew you were the only match the moment you took my hand in the forest, love. The _only_ one. But so help me, if you don’t touch me soon I’m going to make good on that promise I made you the first time I brought you home here,” Charity says between gritted teeth, and Vanessa glows at having pushed to her a breaking point.

 

“Oh, Charity,” Vanessa sighs sweetly, making room for her hand to slip between their bodies, “all you had to do was ask.” She doesn’t waste a second, sliding inside, curling her fingers when she feels Charity tense around them.

 

Vanessa can feel the tension build when she starts to move her fingers swiftly, she can feel Charity’s desire to roll her on her back and teach her a lesson too, can feel it pour heat into Charity’s body against hers.

 

“You’re going to beg for me before the night’s over, Vanessa,” Charity groans as she bends sharply beneath Vanessa’s touch. “I think you’ve forgotten who’s really in your bed.”

 

“I know _exactly_ who’s in my bed,” Vanessa affirms with a smirk, sliding another finger in as Charity’s sigh shakes the bed. “My wife, that’s who. Now, my Queen, tell me, this begging you’re going to have me do? Do I have to make you promise that? Or is the course already set?”

 

-

 

**ἐπίλογος**

**Epílogos**

**( a conclusion)**

 

**-**

 

It’s been a week since Vanessa last saw Charity, only a week and still her absence at Vanessa’s side has left a crackling electricity over her skin that’s only grown sharper and sharper over the last day.

 

Her father is having a banquet tonight with all the noblemen and women from the surrounding areas. It’s a ridiculous show of opulence and nothing else, a chance to show off his wealth and his daughter, claimed by a god and no longer human. Vanessa had hoped that Charity might show up before now to save her the strife of having to sit through the affair, but she’s due to join their guests any minute downstairs, and she hasn’t felt or heard any sign of her arrival yet.

 

Vanessa surveys her image in one of the mirrors in her room, running her hand over the skin of her cheek, admiring the way it looks more and more like Charity’s every day: almost human, but distinctly not as well.

 

She’d been true to her word, Charity had, because it’s been ten years now and Vanessa hasn’t aged a day since she took Charity’s hand in that forest, since she ate the fruit in Charity’s chambers. Since Charity took Vanessa to her bed.

 

The dress Vanessa has on tonight is one of Charity’s favourites, worn especially to try and entice her from her domain below, fine gold almost like the yellow of the flowers Vanessa used to favour before living things like that lost their taste. The fabric drapes over one shoulder, the sleeve long on that side with the other arm and shoulder bare.

 

The dress clings to her with an almost magic she’s not certain isn’t Charity’s design, over her breasts and around her hips, borderline indecent if it weren’t for Vanessa’s status. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s made Charity repair the gown after tearing it from her body. She wonders if Charity will continue to wait out of sight, or whether tonight will add to that tally.

 

She slides a few bangles over her hands and onto her wrists, some fine metal, some made from the same precious stone as the one in the ring on her finger - gifts from Charity on each of the anniversaries of their marriage - before she’s almost ready to leave and join the crowd downstairs.

 

“Are you coming, Vanessa, or do I have to drag you downstairs?” comes a voice from outside her door.

 

Vanessa smiles when she hears her sister speak, slightly impatient through the thick wood. Tracy had been a surprise, although not an altogether unexpected one when she’d made herself known to them several years ago. She was a child born of one of her father’s older indiscretions, a few years younger than Vanessa herself, and she’s been a pleasant balm for Vanessa during her time in the world that used to be her own.

 

“Vanessa, I know you can hear me, do I have to break the door down, or are you coming?”

 

She still aches for Charity something wicked when she’s here, but at least Tracy is better company than her father alone. Or she is ordinarily when she’s not hounding Vanessa to join a party she’d rather cut her hand off to avoid.

 

She pulls the door open sharply after rolling her eyes, meeting the gaze of an indignant looking Tracy.

 

“I know this ‘married to the Queen of the Underworld’ nonsense means you get certain privileges, but it’s rude not to answer when your sister knocks, yes?” Tracy huffs, her hands on her hips over a flowing dress of coral pink, a weight of silver bangles stacked on either wrist.

 

“You look beautiful,” Vanessa states gently, and her sister softens slightly before narrowing her eye.

 

“Does a compliment distract Charity when she’s cross with you?” Tracy asks as she tugs Vanessa out of her doorway, threading her arm through Vanessa’s and walking them down the hallway.

 

“It does if I follow it with something else,” Vanessa answers with a smirk, unable to help her mind wandering to the last time Charity had come for her here, in the middle of a thunderstorm while Vanessa was in the forest picking flowers for Tracy.

 

She had appeared at Vanessa’s side as Vanessa sat on the meadow floor, pulling her to her feet and waking her backwards, her hands on Vanessa's hips, drawing her dress up until Vanessa’s back had hit the trunk of a tree. She had taken Vanessa there as the rain fell heavily around them, the drops curling over the edge of Charity’s jaw when she had drawn back to watch Vanessa come, her eyes red and possessive, her breath soft over Vanessa’s lips when she whispered _come home, love, I've missed you._

 

“Will it ever fade, do you think?” Tracy asks as they reach the top of the marble staircase that leads down to the banquet hall. “The way you feel for her?”

 

“No,” Vanessa says easily. “It won’t.” She isn’t certain how she knows, only that she does, as surely as she knows that the sun will rise tomorrow here and she will hunt out the shadows and shade when it does.

 

She had wondered in the beginning if it was lover’s blush, their passion for each other, whether Charity’s desire for her would fade, but it had only grown stronger and stronger with every day to pass, their love deepening too. The evidence of it rests clearly in Vanessa’s skin, in the line of red that now circles the blue of her eyes permanently, in the fierce glow of the stone on her finger.

 

“Are you sure they won’t notice if we’re gone?” Vanessa asks, sighing heavily as they walk down the stairs arm in arm, and the first pairs of guests start to turn and offer them welcome.

 

“Me perhaps, but not you,” Tracy whispers through her smile, and Vanessa huffs out an exhale before gritting her teeth and grinning at the first woman who tries to press a wine glass into her hand.

 

The first part of the evening passes in a slow dull blur of people pretending not to stare at her skin, trying not to look at her eyes for too long, reaching to touch her ring but drawing back at the last second for fear of being burned, until time comes for them to sit down and eat.

 

Frank situates himself at the head of the table with Tracy at his side, giving Vanessa the other end, and she knows it’s more for his own convenience rather than an actual mark of honour or respect for her or her station, but she’ll take the reprieve from his company in whichever way she can take it. He’s tolerable in small doses during these week long visits every three months, but she finds it hard not to roll her eyes with every word he speaks when he hosts occasions like this with the sole purpose of showing her off in all of her no longer-human glory.

 

He stands once the last of their dishes are brought to the table in front of the thirty or so guests assembled and motions for Vanessa to do the same, which she does reluctantly, swiping her wine glass off the table as she straightens her back.

 

He opens his mouth to speak but he doesn’t get a single word out before a deep thrum of something like thunder booms from beneath their feet. Vanessa feels her heart swoop at the ring of it, because it’s a fine evening, not a cloud in the sky that she can see, which can only mean…

 

“All this for me, Frank?” Charity’s voice sounds confidently through the room, cutting through the anticipatory silence cleanly. “You shouldn’t have.”

 

Vanessa looks around desperately, finding Charity leaning against the wall in the corner of the room behind her father with a positively sinful look on her face. She doesn’t waste a second with anyone else in the room, making her way to Vanessa as soon as she finishes speaking, the only sound the swishing of her gown and the jingling of the bangles at Vanessa’s wrist as she sets her wine glass back on the table.

 

“Hello, love,” Charity says with a smirk when she reaches Vanessa, sliding her arm around the small of Vanessa’s back, pulling her close and kissing her deeply in front of every single one of their guests.

 

She leans Vanessa back, dipping her low as she draws the kiss out, growling when Vanessa runs her tongue along her bottom lip before it slips past them, pushing against Charity’s own.

 

Vanessa feels Charity’s hand slide up the length of her spine, pulling her upright when she does so, melting against the heat of Charity’s body pressed against her own when she stands tall again.

 

“Even wore my favourite dress,” Charity growls against her lips, her hands moving over Vanessa’s sides almost indecently. “Not missing me, are you?”

 

“You know I was,” Vanessa replies directly, as if there weren’t another soul in the room, only the two of them.

 

“Good,” Charity says smartly, kissing her one last time before looking over her shoulder to Vanessa’s father. “I’ll take good care of her, Frank, don’t you worry. In fact, you might hear just how well I’ll do so from here if you listen closely enough. Good set of lungs on her, your daughter has.”

 

Vanessa’s eyes fall on her sister next to her father’s speechless ashen face, finding Tracy holding back a laugh as she watches Charity reach down and pluck a few grapes off a bunch resting on the table.

 

She drops a couple in her mouth, feeding Vanessa one of them before turning and throwing Tracy a quick wink. It’s just long enough for Vanessa to look around at the guests, half horrified, half enthralled, all on the edge of their seats.

 

“Ready?” Charity asks her softly, tracing Vanessa’s jawline with her thumb, licking her lips.

 

“Take me home,” Vanessa sighs, leaning in to kiss Charity as the smoke billows around them, obscuring her view of her father’s palace until the warmth of she and Charity’s home meets her skin.

 

They’re a few feet from the foot of Charity’s bed, _their_ bed, when the smoke fades, and Vanessa walks Charity backwards, her palm flat on Charity’s chest. “Thought you weren’t going to come,” Vanessa hums as they meet the edge of the bed. “Took your time, didn’t you?”

 

“How many times have I told you, I can show you how to do that yourself, so you can bring yourself home whenever you’d like,” Charity says, rolling her eyes as her hands creep up Vanessa’s back, her fingers tucking beneath the neck of her gown. “You’ve got more than enough power now, love.”

 

“I like it when you come for me,” Vanessa teases, a dull throb sounding through her core when she hears the tearing of fabric at her back.

 

“You know I can’t resist a grand entrance,” Charity answers with a shrug, pausing in her destruction of Vanessa’s dress to do so. “And since you raised the subject, I quite like it when you come for me too.”

 

One quick flash and Charity reverses their positions, pushing Vanessa back on the bed, hitching her own dress higher so she can straddle Vanessa’s lap.

 

“I missed you too, love,” Charity purrs softly, her eyes glowing as she picks up the hem of Vanessa’s dress, tearing a split that runs right the length up Vanessa’s thigh so that Charity can slide her hand between her legs easily. “Desperately.”

 

Charity moves her fingers expertly through the wetness collected there, stroking, teasing, like she knows Vanessa’s body as well as she knows her own. Better even, perhaps. She leans down to kiss Vanessa when she moves inside, as Vanessa’s back bows, as Vanessa moans loudly into the room around them, her blood buoyant at being home.

 

Vanessa can feel the walls of the castle warm at her arrival, she can feel the tension in Charity’s body dissipate as they begin to move together, she can feel the hounds howling triumphant down the halls, the echoed sound of it reverberating into her blood.

 

She belongs here, the truth of that has settled deep into her bones over the last ten years in this place with Charity, by her side. She belongs with Charity, as her bride, as her wife, as her equal.

 

Charity whispers against Vanessa’s mouth as she starts moving her fingers, smooth and quick, and Vanessa can feel the red in her own eyes flare bright and burn hot in answer to Charity’s desire.

 

“Shall I show you how much?”

 

-

 

**iːɒn**

**Aeon**

**(an eternity)**

 

∞

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr? Why certainly, right over [here](http://tigerlo.tumblr.com).


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